


Machine in the Ghost

by VeronicaRich



Series: Smokin' Aces [6]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-14
Updated: 2011-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-20 09:52:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeronicaRich/pseuds/VeronicaRich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dwarf crew get more than they bargain for when they find a derelict in deep space. Can be read as a standalone, or as the continuation of "Urgent," which itself juts out of a short earlier series I wrote starting with "Smokin' Aces."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“It’s like a giant, floating Toys R Us,” Lister confirmed, hopping up to sit on an unblinking drive console, crossing his ankles. “The main cargo seems to be toys – acres of them if you laid ‘em out, really.”

“But not real toys,” the Cat interjected. He leaned against an opposite wall, arms crossed, looking like cool had superimposed James Dean over Liberace. “No catnip mousies or big feathers, or even motorized hamsters. Although,” he conceded, “there were these little doohickies with remote controls that Gerbil Cheeks called ‘trucks.’ I suppose I could cover ‘em in padding and fur to be useful.”

“No ship is going to be stocked for deep space with _pet_ toys,” Lister explained yet again. “Not profitable enough.”

“I would not have thought regular toys would be profitable, sir.” Kryten frowned – rather, considering the state of his permanent face, frowned more. “Many ships in the past forbade deep-space crew members from having children, according to my databanks, including those of the Jupiter Mining Corporation.”

“The colony settlements didn’t.” Rimmer’s lips twisted up in one corner wryly. “Some parents didn’t buy much. But the stores themselves were stocked at all times.”

Lister looked over at the taller man, who leaned one hip against the same console, a couple of feet from him. “Don’t tell me your parents didn’t let you guys have toys.”

He shrugged. “John and Frank had some. Howard got some of his own, and their hand-me-downs. Three boys do a lot of damage; by the time they got to me, there wasn’t much left to most of them.”

“I thought your family had _money_.” Lister furrowed his brow. “Hell, man, even my family bought me toys.”

“Oh, they did,” Rimmer nodded, ticking off on his fingers. “For boarding school, body-stretchers, military textbooks and training equipment, uniforms, Mother’s shoes, Father’s cars, Howard's pilot lessons, _three_ brain enhancement implants …” He trailed off, making it clear he could go on and on. “Toys were a reward for good grades and successful completion of obstacle courses. Frank, Howard, and John were good at both; I had all left feet and no aptitude for physics or navigation.”

“Your mostly successful record as Ace would suggest not a lack of aptitude, but perhaps a tendency of requiring proper motivation to develop those skills,” Kryten observed. “I believe humans call it being a late bloomer.”

"Man, his fashion sense must be _really_ waitin’ to flower, then,” the Cat muttered, eyeing Rimmer’s ensemble.

“Just because everything I’m wearing is all in the same color family, kitty, does not mean I’m devoid of couture,” Rimmer snapped back. He gestured at Lister’s usual mishmash of leather and denim and scraps. “How come you never bitch at him for how he looks? A vagrant’s laundry has more of a common theme than his wardrobe.”

Before the Cat could answer, Lister spoke for himself. “I’m a rebel.” He grinned cheekily at Rimmer. “I’m not supposed to match. I’m counterculture.”

“You’re counter-clean,” the hologram huffed.

Lister sniffed inside the fairly new jacket he was still trying to break in, having been forced to leave the old one on the disintegrating _Red Dwarf_. “Oy; I take a LOT more showers than I used to.”

Rimmer crossed his arms loftily. “Only because you’re after something by being clean, that you wouldn’t get otherwise.”

“I wouldn’t?” His eyes speculatively raked the other man, from his dark brown calf-boots up along tight brown trousers, and over the short-sleeved dark green turtleneck tucked into them. “Well … I _did_ get in the shower this morning.”

“Bully for you; pity for the drain.” Rimmer’s mouth valiantly fought off an actual smile. “Good for the sheets, I suppose.”

“At least for a while-”

He was cut off by a retching noise from the Cat, who, despite his dark skin, managed to look quite pale. “Could you Casanovas have some respect for my lunch? It’s _trying_ to stay in my stomach!”

Before being Ace, Rimmer would have bleated quite loudly in retaliation about coming across a desperate Cat trying to mate with an old beanbag chair two months ago. This one coughed into his fist a couple of times, choking out the word “Styrofoam” in between, instead. The Cat went silent, narrowing his angular eyes … then showed his fangs. It was as close as he would get to both acknowledging the incident and thanking the hologram for not making it common knowledge.

“Mr. Rimmer and I found a large store of food and beverages on the mess decks,” Kryten reported. “As well as tanks containing quite a large supply of water. I recommend it be irradiated before drinking, but it should be safe, otherwise.”

“What about the bodies?”

Now it was Kryten’s turn to look impossibly pale. “Sir?”

“Bodies.” Lister spread his hands in a half-shrug. “Nobody loads up a ship with food and aims it for the outer solar system without human beings to staff it. Being way out here means this ship’s about as old as the _Dwarf_. Somewhere, there has to be bodies. Even if the first ones were shot into space, there had to be at least one last person left.”

“Ah, I see what you mean.” Kryten nodded. “However, it is not necessarily true. While the food and some textiles have been vacuum- and cold-stored, the rest of the ship seems to have normal air-recycling. Air aids in decay of organic matter, and over three million years, the basic atoms comprising any bodies would likely be rendered smaller than the largest micron of a ‘Galactic Idol’ winner’s musical integrity.”

“Do we know if there are any stasis booths to check?” Rimmer asked.

“It’s a pretty big ship to search.” Lister chewed at a thumbnail, thinking. “Maybe Holly could interface with the mainframe and save us some time, if it’s not too dangerous for him. We should get back, see what Kochanski thinks.” He looked around. “Speaking of which, has anyone talked to her since we left the cargo bay?”

“Shortly before we rendezvoused here, she signaled that she was almost done with repairs to _Starbug’s_ mainframe,” Kryten piped up.

“Well.” Lister hopped off the console and looked around at them all. “Our chariot’s probably waitin’ on us. Let’s see what the damage is.”

******

Since the small green ship had needed fairly basic parts easily found, Kochanski had been able to effect repairs rather quickly and was slowly walking the perimeter of the derelict’s cargo bay taking a visual inventory of other stock when her four shipmates returned. “Any of you boys bring me a big stuffed panda?” she asked, grinning. “Or maybe a giraffe?”

“No, but I can get you a life-size stuffed Cat,” Rimmer lobbed back, glancing sideways at the felinoid, with a turbo-nostrils smirk.

“Try it, bud, and I’ll turn your light bee into a pendant for the pretty lady.”

Lister rolled his eyes. “I’ll be sure to keep an eye out,” he promised her, smiling. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m just seeing what else we might be able to use from around here. I think a few things might be compatible with our systems, or easily converted.” She looked to Rimmer. “I’m not sure there’s a lot that’ll work with your ship; the _Wildfire’s_ a pretty advanced design.” He hadn’t left since returning with Lister six months prior, and seemed content to stay, but they all agreed having a ready FTL ship and pilot at one’s command was beyond valuable.

“It didn’t cost thirty billion for nothing,” he agreed.

“Hang on; that much?” Lister whistled.

“And that was three million years ago, when she was originally commissioned,” Rimmer nodded, then smirked again. “They must’ve considered Ace a superior pilot to Howard, to give it to him.” Lister regarded him with mild chastisement. “What? I can’t gloat when it’s deserved?”

“You didn’t even like Ace.”

Rimmer looked down at him. “I didn’t like either of them; doesn’t mean I shouldn’t enjoy the credit of the genes.” He addressed Kochanski, who watched, amused. “I’ve had to adapt a lot of things to use on the old girl; I wasn’t always in a position to be picky. I’m sure I can find supplies.”

As the others followed Kochanski while she continued explaining, Lister hung back with Rimmer as the taller man looked over the stacked components against the wall. Lister brushed his fingers against Rimmer's before playing between them and reaching around to rub his thumb against the center of Rimmer's palm.

Rimmer swiveled his head to look down at him. Lister regarded the merriment in those green-brown eyes as he felt long fingers curl around his thumb. He watched Rimmer glance briefly at everyone else's backs, then back to him. “More already?”

“What? It's been a few hours.” It was Lister's turn to smirk as Rimmer quietly laughed. “Sue me, I'm horny. So're you.”

“So _you_ are.” He stuck his tongue out at Lister, then looked back to the wall of parts as he kept a couple of fingers on Lister's hand. “Too bad _Starbug's_ only so large; we could really use about all of that. Smeg knows when we'll come across another cache anywhere.”

Lister didn't even think on his next words; they just fell out of his mouth. “Maybe if the joint's completely empty, we can just move in here.”

Rimmer raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Nobody seems to be usin' this ship. Still capable of running, right? Just need to switch on some systems. It has its own energy collection or the air recyc wouldn't work. And it's smaller than _Red Dwarf_ , so even if we never see that heap again, maybe this would be better anyway.”

“It's not going to move faster than three million years per … three million years,” Rimmer pointed out, wisely stopping as the witty rejoinder he’d hoped for at the beginning of the quip resigned somewhere in the middle of it and embezzled itself away.

“Yeah, I know _that_ , smeg-for-brains. But there'd be more space, more storage area, more protection … more privacy.” _Starbug_ was pretty small, and it became even smaller when you were the only two people aboard having regular sex. Much as Lister liked snuggling, it just wasn't enough for his libido, and he was sick of having to tamp down his natural verbosity. Moreover, he got tired of rarely hearing anything louder than muffled whimpers out of Rimmer – he'd made the man _shout_ back in that hotel room, and he wanted to do it again, by Gordon.

“Privacy.” Rimmer repeated, and Lister saw the momentary glint of hazel-eyed speculation that made him want to throw the guy down right here and ride him stupid. “What if there are people in stasis?”

“I doubt they’ll be walking in on the middle of anything.” Rimmer arched a brow; Lister shrugged, quirking the corner of his mouth up. “We ask them to share the ship with us. Plenty of food, and I'd imagine they wouldn't mind seeing some friendly faces from their own species … -ish,” he finished, thinking of the Cat. “We have things to offer, too, y'know.”

“And if they come charging out of stasis and attack us, instead?”

“You're just full of sunshine today, Rimmer.”

He spread his hands. “It was Ace’s job for several years to anticipate and prepare for trouble. It was usually warranted.”

Footsteps announced the others were returning, and it was Kryten who spoke first. “Sirs – ma’am – if you still want to make landfall on the moon we were originally headed for, its sunrise will begin in two hours, and daylight will only occur for about five hours each day for scouting water and food.” Everybody looked around at each other – the ship was a sure source of supplies, but the moon might have something else they needed. Kryten shuffled his feet and muttered, “Engaging throat-clearing mode,” then raised his voice back to normal. “I believe one solution may be to split up into two groups to search both the ship and the moon.”

“Yes – I was just thinking that,” Kochanski said, nodding. Lister nodded along, too, while Rimmer and the Cat glanced at one another with similar expressions: _Sure, let’s all pretend we had the obvious idea and were each just too shy to speak up. That’s believable with this group._ “Does anyone want to volunteer to stay-”

Lister’s hand went up like a shot; so did his voice. “We’ll stay!” Rimmer looked at him, askance, and he cleared his throat and dropped his tone back to normal. “I mean, y’know, you need the _’Bug_ for going down there, since it has more room – we can keep the _Wildfire_ in case we need to leave here. And since it’s ol’ Ace’s ship, I imagine he’d want to be the one to pilot it.”

Kochanski looked to Rimmer. “You agreeable with this, ol’ Ace?”

“Think nothing of it, spunky lady,” Rimmer shot back in his best deep-voiced test pilot voice, his expression clearly conveying what he thought of the performance. “Me and the old girl and Davy-boy’ll make sure everything’s tickety-boo around here.”

“I’ll be sure not to tell Fiona you called her ‘old girl,’” Kochanski promised.

“Oh, thank you.” Rimmer’s real voice sighed with genuine gratitude.

*****

“Ahhh.” Rimmer reached behind him and grabbed at the strut he was backed against. The space-cold metal registered briefly against his skin, but being a hard-light hologram had its advantages, namely that his body could tune it out easier than a human’s could. Besides, it perfectly countered the warmth enveloping his hips, the front of his legs, and his cock. He was shaking with it. “Oh … damn. Dave …”

On one knee, Lister didn’t bother answering; his smug grin that only briefly interrupted his fellating was enough, and he knew it. He leaned back on his heels and lifted his eyes to glide up Rimmer’s mostly naked torso, bobbing slightly as his hips undulated with the rhythm of the sucking. He’d barely given Rimmer the chance to descend from the _Wildfire_ hatch and the cargo bay doors to shut on the departing _Starbug_ before he’d backed him against the landing gear, stripped him nearly bare, and put hungry tongue to skin. To his credit, Rimmer no longer went off like Old Impatient, and while Lister congratulated himself on his tutelage, by the time he stood back up, his knees were shaky and creaked a little. “I need to be more or less horizontal to do that again,” he panted, leaning into his partner and wiping his lips against Rimmer’s shoulder.

“Was your own fault.” He curled his arms around Lister, mumbling in his hair. “Yank me off the steps, nearly turn my ankle …” Rimmer didn’t have the heart to genuinely complain. “I knew you were desperate-”

“Yeah, and you were quiet as a church mouse.” Lister straightened and frowned at him.

Rimmer shrugged fondly, lifting a plait behind the other man’s shoulder. “Sorry – force of habit.”

“Yeah, well, we’re gonna break you of that. I’ll have you screaming-” Lister threatened, leaning in.

A scream, both unearthly and unjupiterly, ricocheted shrilly through the cargo bay, making both men grab at one another in reflex. “What the SMEG was that?” Rimmer screeched.


	2. Chapter 2

“Ow – ow, man, let go.” The words were muffled into the side of Rimmer’s neck. “Seriously; too hard. Squeezing. ARN. CRUSHING.” It came out sounding more like, “Srshy arf. Eesing. RRR. RUSHMFF.” Lister managed to pry himself away from the hologram’s stronger grip, but kept his hands on him – the noise had unnerved him, as well. “Where’d it come from?”

“How the devil should I know?” Lister gave him a look, and Rimmer cleared the whine out of his throat, yanking his inner Ace to the fore. “We’ll go find out,” he amended, pulling his trousers up and his shirt down.

For some reason, the corridors were darker than they remembered, which was a feat, considering they’d walked these hallways less than ninety minutes earlier. “Holly?” Lister called out around them; he didn’t see any monitors along where they were, but even the disembodied East London accent over a speaker would be welcome if the computer consciousness had managed to work his way through the ship’s comm system by now.

Up front, Rimmer pointed around a small palm-light that he’d unclipped from the wide nylon utility belt he’d refastened around his hips. He heard Lister call to Holly a second time, and stopped only long enough to reach back absently with a touch for his attention. “Shhh,” he advised, trying to extend his normal hearing range around them.

“You hear something?” Lister stage-whispered. Rimmer nodded. “What?”

“YOU!” he hissed over his shoulder, then dropped his voice. “Let me concentrate.” All he could hear were the normal groans inside any old structure – mild settling creaks, a steady drip of water, the scritch of his own fingernails nervously working the grain of his velour trousers, the brush-and-squeak of Lister’s nearly new leather jacket as he moved sideways behind Rimmer in order to keep an eye on their backs-

Wait – running water? Neither he nor Kryten had turned on any faucets. “Did you or the moggy fiddle with any sinks or toilets, or showers on your walk-through?” he asked Lister, quietly.

“Don’t think so. Cat licked his hands a few times to pat down his hair, but I don’t remember any water.” Lister frowned. “You hear running water? But the tanks would be empty.”

“Yes, I know.” Rimmer patiently gritted his teeth, then relaxed. He didn’t need to show off anymore, and Lister had been figuring things out as well or better than he did for many years. “Unless there was someone-”

“-else aboard not that long ago, besides us,” Lister finished. “Holy smeg. And maybe it’s still on here, with us. Maybe we should head back and get a couple of rifles.” What Rimmer’s ship lacked in habitable space, it made up in a sizable boot filled with an impressive array of artillery.

“Let’s just go see where it’s coming from right now,” Rimmer suggested, moving forward quietly; he had a small gun hidden if needed. Besides, he’d searched scores of abandoned vessels alone, trained for combat and taken on far bigger opponents – even so, having Lister at his back made him feel safer. “Could be our booting up the computer caused some sort of maintenance reaction, making a pipe leak.”

They were largely silent as they moved along one wall, then down another corridor and along that wall. The dripping grew louder, until even Lister murmured, “Yeah, I hear it now.” Rimmer stopped outside a door and bounced the light across it – a boring gunmetal gray decorated only with the universal stick-person man/woman symbols. “Looks like a loo.”

The door gave easily enough, and Rimmer stepped in, spotting the faucet responsible for the noise before sticking his head in each of two stalls. “All clear,” he told Lister, who was moving into the small room. “Wait, don’t let the door-” He was cut off by the echoing SLAM! of the heavy metal door. “Shut.”

“What? We got in okay,” Lister pointed out. “What twonk’d install a loo door on a ship that can’t be unlocked from the inside?” He shook his head and twisted both knobs to see which would shut off the sink, but since they went the opposite direction of what he expected, the spigot spat out a full-blast stream of cold water. Cursing, he twisted the knobs the other way, or tried to; they seemed stuck.

He was trying for the third time when Rimmer came over. “Nice job, Listy!” he was saying loudly, over the water, which was apparently taxing the ancient pipes, judging by all the banging and squeaking going on. Echoes banged around the tiny room like tap dancers on speed. “Tear up the bathroom! It’s like blowing out the front tires before you even haggle over the price of the car!”

“Just turn it off!” Rimmer attempted to do just this, to no avail. “Quit screwin’ around!” Lister gestured at the water now overflowing the small basin.

“I’m not ‘screwing,’ you git; you should know what that look like! It won’t shut off!” He twisted harder, and Lister reached for the backs of his hands to stop him, shaking his head. “What’re you doing? I’ve almost got it-” Rimmer put some superhuman strength into his fingers, and both knobs abruptly broke off, one cracking in half. “Well, shit.”

He was still frowning thunderously at them when Lister smacked his arm and pointed at the ceiling over the sinks. “Give me a boost up there! I might be able to turn off the pipes!”

“With what?” Rimmer watched Lister pat himself down for tools, and shook his head as he tossed aside the useless knobs. “Unless you remembered to stash a wrench in your shorts, we’re going to have to get out of here and find one first!”

The door, however, appeared to suffer from the same malady that had afflicted the sink knobs. Neither was able to turn the knob, which appeared to be locked. “You want to run your theory by me again about interior doorknobs?” Rimmer yelled, though he managed to sound calmer than Lister about it.

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Lister argued, shaking his head as he uselessly twisted the knob – which didn’t even have a lock button on it, or a keyhole. “Something’s wrong, Rimmer!”

“Yes – you!”

“Go soak your smeggin’ head! You know I’m right!”

“You first!” When Lister turned, his boots splashed up some water; he followed Rimmer’s hand gestures down to see a small pool already forming on the floor. The door didn’t show a gap at the bottom, instead tacked with a thin rubber strip down there. Rimmer looked around them, a curious expression on his pointed features. “Does it strike you this little sink sure puts out a hell of a lot of water?” he called over the gurgling of the spitting faucet – which, incredibly, seemed to have gotten louder since the knobs broke off.

Lister looked again to the ceiling; it had access panels, but who knew what kind of room there really was up there? He remembered crawling around _Starbug_ ’s duct work, and swallowed, rethinking his earlier plan. Nothing else for it, though. “I think that’s our only way out!” he pointed upward.

If Lister looked as green as he felt, Rimmer apparently didn’t notice. The hologram put his head back to look around, circling slowly, then went into a stall and climbed up on the toilet. He balanced a booted foot on the pipe above the back of it, gave it a little bouncing test a few times, and threw an arm toward the ceiling – after the third try, he knocked the grated panel up with the heel of his hand; a few more tries, and he managed to push it aside. Hooking both hands around the crossbars on which the grating had rested, Rimmer gripped it and swung his foot up onto the partition between stalls. In a feat of limber strength, the man levered himself with his foot at the same time he pulled on the crossbeams, until he was precariously perched lengthways on his back atop the slender metal partition, which rocked a little with the weight. _What’s he balanced on, his smegging spine?_ Lister wondered. He splashed into the stall, the water now above his ankles, and reached up to put his hands on Rimmer’s closest thigh and side. “You’re gonna fall off of there!” he called over the pipes, now groaning the more water they pumped out.

Ignoring him, Rimmer extended his arms up into the open ceiling, apparently found something to grab, and pulled his torso up while sliding carefully back along the top of the partition, putting one foot flat to balance himself as he let the other fall off. He sat up, balanced in a seated position on the metal wall now, and made quick work of climbing the rest of the way into the ceiling from here. A couple of minutes after his legs had disappeared, he stuck his head back down through. “Get up here!” he called, extending a hand.

Lister climbed up on the toilet, trying not to lose his footing, and stretched hard to get his fingers around the metal crossbeams. He pulled hard, lifting himself a little, and he felt the hand on his back, scrabbling. Eventually, those long fingers found the back of his trousers and seized, pulling. Between the two of them, he managed to finally crawl into the ceiling, grabbing at bits of Rimmer’s clothing along his back to pull his way along, and finally collapsed mostly on top of the man, his cheek against the back of a soft-clad knee. Lister rubbed his face on the cloth experimentally for comfort before rolling carefully onto his side and waiting for Rimmer to roll to his back and sit up. It wasn’t tall in the duct tunnel, and the hologram hit his head as he did so. “Ouch,” he muttered, rubbing the spot briefly. “Better be finding those pipes.”

He pulled the grate back into place, checked it for weight-bearing, and turned toward the sink wall. Rimmer began crawling toward it until he realized he was alone. “What’re you doing back there? C’mon, I know smeg-all about plumbing. You’re the handyman.” He glared impatiently. “Lister-”

“Give me a minute.” He was trying to remember how to breathe; the walls of the tiny space were closing around him, he could swear it, intent on vacuum-sealing him like a bag of Ziplocked chops.

“Every minute you wait, the tank loses more- Really, Lister, what’re you playing at?” Rimmer turned all six-something feet of himself around and scuttled back; Lister could make out his eyes as he got closer, so he knew the guy could see him, too. “Dave?” he asked, less imperious and more worried. “What’s wrong?”

“I – small spaces.” He shook his head. “I said, give me a minute.”

He felt a hand reach for both of his, occupied each gripping a forearm across his chest. Rimmer pulled one away and squeezed it. “You’re claustrophobic.” This was said soothingly. “Come on, Dave – come over here to me. It isn’t that far. We’ll get you there, and then out of here as soon as we can.” He tugged at Lister’s hand. “You’re braver than this, I know. It’s just a duct – nothing to be scared of. I wouldn’t be up here with you if it was scary, would I? I’d be halfway to the Crab Nebula by now.” Lister chuckled nervously. “Dave …”

Taking a deep breath, Lister nodded and gestured for Rimmer to go ahead, then followed, grateful for the leather and denim he wore on his palms and knees.

Neither had been keeping time, so they didn’t know how much later it was when they finally pushed out a vent panel into what turned out to be a somewhat spacious crew quarters. Rimmer went through first, reaching for a metal overhead beam as Lister held his legs to keep him from falling – he twisted his body, pulled himself out backwards, and dropped into a graceful crouch on the floor. The rafter was a bit high for Lister to do the same, plus he had nobody to hold his feet while he stretched; he looked down at the smooth wall below him, sighing. “Where’s a towel rack when you need to do a fancy Olympic flip?”

They ended up simply having Rimmer grab at him as he slithered out head-first, and it mostly worked – that is, they both ended up on the floor, but Lister’s landing was largely cushioned. Rimmer winced, sitting up slowly as Lister leaned back on his haunches. “Glad you lost some weight,” the hologram muttered, rubbing his lower back, “or that might’ve HURT.”

Lister ignored his bitching; Rimmer’s bee was more or less indestructible, which meant even a fat Scouser would’ve been hard pressed to so much as dent it. “Those pipes were awfully easy to turn off,” he observed as he got up. “Considering we didn’t have a wrench or pliers.” He offered Rimmer a hand up. “But why would the computer have been messing with those pipes? Or anyone else who might’ve been here?”

Rimmer shrugged. “One way to find out.” He looked around for the monitor, then crossed the room to it. “Holly?” he said to it; when the face didn’t appear, he called sharper, “HOLLY!” Still nothing. “He should’ve really been able to find a comm channel by now,” Rimmer said.

Lister shrugged out of his sodden coat and mopped his forehead with his shirt sleeve; normally a little chilly aboard ship, he was roasting and soaking from being packed into such a tight space high up. He checked the closet, yanked out a few trousers to hold them up for examination, and put all but a couple back before heading for what looked like the washroom. “I smell like a damn goat,” he told Rimmer. “Quick shower.”

“Two in one day?” The man’s eyebrows shot up along his mile-high forehead. “My God in heaven.” Lister gave him the middle finger; the last thing he heard as he shut the bathroom door was, “I’m going to hold you to that promise, Lister.”

*****

It wasn’t until he was slipping into REM sleep a little over an hour later that Lister realized they never had found the source of the scream.

*****

A scratching sound woke Lister in the wee hours of the morning; at least he figured it was, since the mood light denoting the time of day in the nearly-black room was still a dirty indigo, edging very slightly toward a dirty orange sunrise. It stopped once his eyes were open; he yawned and tried to go back to sleep, his head still tucked under the side of Rimmer’s chin. But a few minutes later, it started up again. He held his breath, keeping his eyes closed; it sounded larger and more rhythmic than a rat or similar small creature might produce.

He didn’t realize the body beneath him had gone still, too, until he heard a hushed, “Sounds almost like a person doing that.”

“Uh huh,” Lister agreed, straining his ears to try to pick out the source. “Like it’s on wallpaper, not metal or drywall.”

They listened for a couple of more minutes; Lister felt himself drifting off again and let his eyes close, too warm and comfortable to care about solving this mystery right now. That changed abruptly as someone who was neither of them very deliberately and loudly

CLEARED

THEIR

THROAT.

Both men were up faster than a politician’s ratings once her opponent is caught with underage hookers. “Lights!” Rimmer barked; they blinked at one another in the sudden brightness, then around the bedroom.

It occurred to Lister that automatic lights needed an instigator, since Rimmer had had to turn them off manually just a few hours earlier. “Holly!” he called out. A few seconds later, he was rewarded by the hologram’s familiar visage filling the screen on the opposite wall. “Good to see you, man. Who the hell was that?”

Holly regarded them both and pointedly looked up and off to the side. “Good to see _parts_ of you, Dave. Arn.” Lister looked down and realized the sheet had been tossed down to mid-thighs when they sat up. He rolled his eyes as Rimmer yanked it up, and cleared his own throat to get Holly’s attention. The hologrammatic head regarded the pair again and nodded. “How’s it going, dudes?”

“Not so good, actually. Who else is on the ship besides us? Did Kris and the guys get back sometime during the night? Already?”

“Nope. It’s just you two, so far as I know.”

“So far as you _know_?” Rimmer harrumphed, trying to look officious while blushing and fiddling with the sheet to disguise his morning erection. “What a fabulous security system you are, Hol.”

“If that were my job or this was my ship, I’d be offended, I would.”

The room got quiet, and Lister glanced between the offended-looking monitor and Rimmer still playing Stash The Sausage, before literally throwing up his hands. “Holly, what the bleedin’ SMEG was that clearing its throat awhile ago in here? It wasn’t a rat, and no dog or cat I know sounds like that. Well, not more than one cat.”

“The system isn’t showing any life signs aboard other than the two of you, I’m telling you,” Holly insisted.

“There’s nothing else living at all? Nobody in stasis, even?” Rimmer wondered.

“Negative.”

The two men glanced at each other, shaking their heads. “Unless we both managed to experience the very same hallucination at the very same time in the same manner, Holly, the thought occurs there must be an actual producer of those sounds on board this ship,” Rimmer enunciated with painful patience.

“What sounds?” Lister described them, and Holly furrowed his brow. “You two didn’t leave on a video last night, did you?” They shook their heads. “Right, then. Well, this demands a bit of investigation. I’ll see what I can track down.” And he vanished from the screen.

Lister rubbed at his face as Rimmer fell back against his pillow with a soft sigh. “Something’s out there,” he said, unnecessarily.

To his credit, Rimmer didn’t wiseass back at him. “We need to go check it out,” he said after a long pause, tossing the sheet aside and sitting up on his side of the bed.

“No, I think we should- Really?” Lister looked over in surprise. He still hadn’t gotten used to this particular Ace in action, since he anticipated Rimmer would want to do his usual impression of a dust bunny in the face of potential danger and roll under something. To be fair, there hadn’t been any opportunities in the last six months for Rimmer to prove his mettle in these sorts of situations, other than trying to track down that scream. “You think so?”

Rimmer finished yawning, nodding, and fixed him with sleep-bleary eyes as he rubbed at his stubbly chin. Naked, he padded to the same small closet Lister had raided earlier and pawed briefly through the vacuum-sealed contents before finding something suitable. He came by the bed and tossed the clothes on it, pointed his gaze deliberately at Lister’s own half-erection, and met his eye with a saucy wink and tongue peeking out between his teeth before strolling off suggestively into the bathroom. Lister hesitated, thought of the rest of their group likely returning in a couple of days and crowding around them once again, and rolled his eyes.

“Smeg,” he groused disingenuously two minutes later, schlepping into the already-steaming shower.

Another forty-eight soapy, mind-blowing minutes later, they were dressed, mostly dry, and in a far better combined mood. “We need to swing by the ship for some more firepower,” Rimmer noted. “I only carry a little on me, and you don’t have anything, do you?”

“Not even a colon full of curry today.”

“And thank the gods for that,” Rimmer mused. “Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter 3

It took them nearly twenty minutes to get to the _Wildfire_ and locate a couple of powered laser rifles. Rimmer sheepishly plugged in and began charging the others, which had been neglected for a few months, and he and Lister struck out for the ship proper. After a protracted silence wandering the corridors listening for anyone – thing – else, Lister observed, “Well, I guess we know why it’s named the _Barbie_ now.”

“And why it’s antacid pink,” Rimmer agreed.

That got Lister to thinking about liquid colors. “You ever mess around in the paintball court on _Red Dwarf_? Back when … you know.”

“Before I bit the dust?” Rimmer finished for him. “Bought the farm? Took a dirt nap? Did my impression of Jimi Hendrix at twenty-eight? Passed beyond the mortal-”

“Yeah, ALRIGHT.”

The hologram laughed softly at Lister’s annoyance and glanced back fondly at him. “No. I spent my free time in a stasis booth trying to stave off middle age.”

Lister didn’t know that. “Really?”

“Oh, yes.” Rimmer had never admitted it to anyone, not even his diary, and the _Dwarf_ had been so large that there was really no way or reason Lister would’ve had to ever discover this in their seven months alive together. “I had a keycard, and would spend most of my down time in one of the booths, trying to bank back time. Had it all planned out, too – I calculated at the rate I was going, if I kept it up, by the time I was ninety my body wouldn’t even be eighty.” He shook his head as they turned carefully down a new corridor, toward one of the cargo storerooms. “My god, I can’t believe I ever intended to spend the whole of my life on that rust bucket hiding in stasis.”

Lister carefully said nothing. He had no problem needling Rimmer even now when he felt the guy needed it, but he’d changed a lot in the several years he’d been away as Ace, and while Lister was still getting used to those changes, he appreciated the improved Rimmer. “I don’t think we were down this way,” he reported instead.

“Kryten and I were. Toy storage, like a lot of other rooms along these halls.” They stopped at an oversized door, and Rimmer carefully turned the unlocked handle and pushed it open as Lister hefted his rifle and shone its torch inside, squinting for anyone hiding within. He kept it aloft as Rimmer called for the lights; the high-ceilinged room was flooded with a sudden sunburst of illumination, and Lister blinked. For his part, Rimmer was able to adjust his pupils quickly to deal with the input and kept scanning. “Into the fray,” he declared, stepping in before Lister.

Once they established they were alone in the cavernous room – at least outside of the boxes – they began nosing into those boxes. The first ones were filled mostly with stuffed animals, and at one point, Lister watched out of his periphery as Rimmer lifted out a small teddy bear sporting a green military helmet and big, black marble eyes; “Patton?” he heard the hologram ask it quietly, a look of boyish joy briefly lighting his face. When Rimmer glanced over at him, Lister put on a performance of busily digging through his large box, keeping the man only in the corner of his sight. Rimmer sighed over the little bear, gave it a happy squeeze, and tucked it into his half-zippered leather jacket. Lister leaned further into the box to disguise his stupid smile – and came up with a long, narrow box. “All right!” he cheered.

“What’s that?” Rimmer snapped, afraid he’d been caught in his nostalgia.

Lister yanked the box open and picked up both plastic swords in one hand. He tossed one handle-first at Rimmer and waved his about foolishly. “Avast, ye peg-legged swabbie!”

Rimmer stared at his childish weapon for a moment, but raised it in defense as Lister attacked. The hard plastic blades thwacked together, and Rimmer’s lips twisted. “Yer nothin’ but a worm-ridden landlubber, Lister!” he growled in return. “ARRRR!”

“That’s CAPTAIN Dave Lister to you!” More plastic-thwacking. “Surrender!”

“HA! Eat smeg and die, Scouser!” They whacked and poked, ducked out of the way, twirled and stabbed playfully, scurrying the breadth of the room to duck behind boxes and leap out at opportune moments. At one point, Lister backed toward a low crate, hopped up theatrically to avoid Rimmer’s blade, and calculated to land on his feet on the box, where he struck a dramatic pose. “Ye fight like a wench!”

“I’ve _seen_ Kochanski’s karate,” he pointed out. “I’ll take that as a compliment!” He stabbed toward Lister, who spun and leaped off the crate, then turned again and started parrying, backing up. They wove between more boxes, around a couple of support beams, until at one point Rimmer crouched and leaped from a couple of stacked crates he’d climbed, grabbing onto a low metal truss, and swung himself up to stand and balance on it, staring down at Lister. “C’mon _Captain_!” he taunted, brandishing the toy sword.

Lister only laid his head back and stared up the distance at Rimmer. “You have got to be yankin' me; do I _really_ look like Jack Sparrow?”

Rimmer cocked his head, studying what Lister called hair. “You know – you kind of do.”

Snapping his fingers, Lister pointed at the floor. “Get down here.” Instead, Rimmer posed a little, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and hopped to the next truss, a good six feet away. He grinned down at Lister – then did it again. “Show-off,” Lister called up at him; Rimmer stuck his tongue out. He pouted a bit down at Lister, who only rolled his eyes without any real annoyance.

After a few minutes, Rimmer held his arms out at his sides, took a step backward, and dropped the approximately fifteen feet to the floor into a graceful crouch, then straightened and slashed a makeshift “A” into the air before him. _“Charmita!”_ He grinned, making Lister want badly to kiss him.

That’s when the lights promptly went out. Lister was quiet a moment, straining his ears and hearing only light, soft sounds, before he stage-whispered, “Rimmer?”

“Yes?” The voice startled him, probably not two feet in front of him, and he blew out a big breath in relief. “You okay?”

“What the hell is going on on this ship?” he answered instead.

The other man sighed. “I don’t know” he confessed. “No idea.” Lister felt something on his forearm and realized it was a hand, squeezing lightly. “Maybe Holly’s done enough of a scan by now that he can tell us; let’s go find a monitor.”

The cargo door, surprisingly, was standing open where they’d left it. Lister headed for it, hearing Rimmer’s steps not far behind him. “What do you figure-” He was cut off by something wet and _nasty_ from above, suddenly hitting him and covering nearly his entire body; he could feel the heavy, viscous substance getting into his mouth and sliding between his fingers as he let out a frustrated yell. “WHAT. THE. _SMEG_?!”

He felt something rubbing at his face, and was able to open his eyes and see Rimmer shaking thick green ooze off what looked like a handkerchief. “You all right, Dave?” he asked, sounding something between concerned and … “Are you laughing at me?” Lister demanded.

“No,” came the too-quick answer. Rimmer cleared his throat, putting the side of his fist to his mouth and shaking his head.

“Lousy liar!” Lister exclaimed. “You son of a bitch.”

“Yes?” Rimmer said pleasantly. They both knew what his mother had been. “Your point?”

“What the hell was it?” Lister looked up, squinting into the darkness of the ceiling. “It just dropped on me, and-” He was cut off yet again by the overhead lights flaring back into life, effectively blinding him. “I- WHAT IS THIS?” he bellowed, shutting his eyes quickly and looking down, seeing purple spots behind his eyelids. “It’s like the smegging ship has it IN for me,” he whined, sounding rather pathetic, he knew.

“Come on.” No longer quite able to keep the amusement out of his voice, Rimmer put a hand on his slimy back and guided his half-blinded lover toward the corridor. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” Lister heard him snicker. “Again.”

“’S not funny.”

“Well – it sure looks like snot, and it’s pretty funny,” Rimmer disagreed, pushing him gently along.

*****

Scowling, Lister stood in the middle of the sleeping quarters, a towel around his waist and another draped over his head as he rubbed vigorously, swearing he could still feel green crap in his hair even though he’d washed it three times and checked the mirror in the bathroom. “Do I look like a fecking Ghostbuster?” he muttered, the words coming out in a rattle as he dried his hair.

“I don’t know,” Rimmer observed, “but you haven’t been this clean since …” He trailed off, and Lister peered out of the towel toward him. “Well – ever.”

“I am not taking another smegging shower today,” Lister declared, tossing the towel on the floor. “Four in twenty-four hours is my limit.”

“Four a fortnight is good for y-” Rimmer’s green eyes widened at Lister’s dirty look and matching hand gesture, and the words withered, though his smile didn’t. “Right, then.”

“We’ve got to find whatever this is.” At least he’d thought to toss yesterday’s clothes into the automatic launderer, Lister reflected, as he threw both wet towels in along with the slimy clothes he’d chucked in earlier, and pulled out dry boxers, trousers, and shirt and tugged them on. “There’re only so many clothes on this ship that’ll fit me, and I’m pretty sure wandering naked isn’t gonna do better things for my health with whatever’s got it in for me.”

“Holly swears there are no life signs,” Rimmer reported. “Of course, we are talking about the consciousness that lost a game of backgammon to himself. I’d feel better having Nona do a scan.”

Lister was rooting around in the closet again. “Just a minute,” came his muffled response. Nearly that long later, he emerged with a plastic yellow mackintosh he’d managed to find, shrugging into and tying it closed before pulling the hood up and picking up his rifle. “Not taking any more chances.”

Following him into the corridor, Rimmer said, “Aren’t you missing some fishsticks and a ship’s wheel with that thing?”

“I hope sliming is the worst thing that happens to _you_ when this thing finally decides the great Ace isn’t off-limits,” Lister groused, hustling toward the cargo bay and keeping his eyes and rifle alert for more trouble.

The _Wildfire’s_ computer was no more help than Holly even after a broader scan. “Sorry, boys,” the feminine voice pronounced. “Looks like the only living thing on this ship is in _your_ ship right now, Ace.”

Rimmer tapped his fingers on the console, trying to think of something else to ask, something he might’ve missed on ordering the initial scan. Beside him, Lister sat, sans coat, similarly in deep thought. “You’re saying there’s nothing at all different from the results Holly got?” Lister finally asked Fiona. “Nothing?”

She was quiet for a while, presumably cross-checking with the wireless report Holly had transmitted a few minutes earlier. “The only difference is I broadened my search and found some spikes in the _Barbie’s_ main power supply.”

“How many?”

“Multiple, Dave. They vary by intensity; it’s just that they’re erratic and there don’t seem to be any significant changes in load to support their existence.”

“All right – what about the biggest ones? Are there any that are really noticeably big since we came on board?”

She hesitated. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘really noticeably big.’”

Rimmer shook his head. “She’s a computer,” he told Lister. “As an A.I., there’s a lot she can extrapolate, but she still needs some parameters spelled out. Nona,” he said, shifting to address the ship, “can you show me a compressed graphic of these power spikes since we came aboard?”

In mid-air there suddenly hung a transparent hologrammatic line-graph that looked to Lister like the controls on a recording studio soundboard. “Bigger,” Rimmer muttered, and the graph helpfully expanded, making the numbers at the bottom larger – which was the only thing that really needed to be bigger, since it was easy enough to see two high spikes on the chart. “Those,” Lister said, climbing to his feet and pointing at each. “Here’re two really noticeably big ones here.”

“Yeah, but there are others around them that are nearly as high,” Rimmer pointed out, defending his computer.

“What times did those take place?” Lister asked. “Can you see where I’m pointing to, Fiona?”

“The first was at twenty-oh-seven yesterday,” she said, smoothly delivering the time in their bodies’ terms. “The other was at nine-forty-two, not even one hour ago.”

“That’s it!” Lister smacked Rimmer on the shoulder. “Whatever those surges are, they happened at the same time we were gettin’ creamed by water or slime!”

“What caused those two power spikes, Nona?” Rimmer asked, with one eye on Lister’s hand, making sure he wasn’t about to get hit again. Not that he didn’t enjoy the occasional smack on a body part – but not in this setting.

“I don’t know,” the computer voice admitted, sounding faintly troubled. “I’m still trying to work that out.”

He thought a couple of minutes more. “We need to go check the stasis booths, do an eyeball of ‘em,” Rimmer told her. “Monitor the central power supply and buzz me if you see a spike mounting – say, if the power gets near-” Here, he studied the graph briefly. “Ten point five, maybe?” The two highest were over 13, and around them, the activity tended to stay beneath the level he’d specified. “Maybe we’ll have some warning,” he told Lister, getting up out of the pilot’s seat. “Let’s go see if any of these poor bastards pulled a kitten-smuggle and got themselves put on ice for the last three million or so."


	4. Chapter 4

Their trip to the medi-bay was uneventful and quiet. Lister was on edge and not in the mood to trade barbs. Rimmer wondered if he should instigate conversation a few times, just to take Lister’s mind off the next substance he was likely to be bathed in. Arguing had become comfortable for them once upon a time; even now it was common communication, though not their primary mode, since they _were_ making an effort to hammer out something resembling an adult relationship. In the end, they made it to the stasis booths before he could think of suitable small talk. They started at opposite ends of the dozen booths and worked toward the center, shining torches inside before pulling each one open for an unobstructed view. Rimmer spotted something in his fourth one, rubbed at the glass, and peered closer before unlocking the door and spinning it open. “Look at this,” he said.

Lister was at his shoulder a few seconds later. “A skeleton?”

“I thought it was strange Nona and Holly didn’t find anyone in stasis,” Rimmer muttered. “Guess they just weren’t alive.” He had a thought and shut the door, moving to the next one; he performed the same rub-glass-peer-in, and Lister stood off, watching. “I think there’s another one here.”

“How’d they get to be skeletons in there? They shouldn’t die in there.”

Rimmer shrugged, opening the second door. “Could’ve been a leak in the booths,” he postulated. “Or someone put them in here long after they died on the outside.” He studied the second skeleton. “Anything in those other booths?”

After a few minutes spent checking the others closely, Lister reported, “No dice. See anything new?”

“I think.” He played the light of his torch over the center of the shorter skeleton’s body. “Take a look at this.” Before Lister could ask why, Rimmer let the door swing to and reopened the first skeleton’s door and repeated the action over its midsection. “I’m no doctor,” he said, “but I think we’ve got one of each – male and female. The pelvic bones look quite a bit different, at least to me.”

“Yeah …” Lister agreed, thinking. “Hmm. Maybe a couple who put themselves in stasis?” Rimmer nodded. “Only the booths were faulty?” He didn’t read minds, but he imagined Rimmer’s sudden frown mirrored his own thoughts about how not all stasis booths were created equal. “Hey, who’d have thought a Jupiter Mining P.O.S.’d be better quality than somethin’ on a private ship?”

“We should ask Holly to be sure. See if he can run a diagnostic on all of these and find a leak.”

“Back to the drive room.”

“First, the medical bay. I want to see if there are some power packs; I didn’t check earlier.”

Lister nodded, closing up the booths as Rimmer left. The power packs were used for very small devices such as medical scanners and surgical tools – and light bees. His hand lingered on the handle of the second door, and he looked between both booths, trying to imagine the hope these two had likely had locking themselves in stasis. Perhaps they had set the timer, intending to get out after a few centuries and spend some time together, then go back in, trying to live in bursts until their slow-moving ship found among the stars … well, what? A cure for death? Just trying to see as much as the galaxy as they could together? For the first time it occurred to Lister that he would die someday, and Rimmer would keep going. He thought of how the hologram – no, the _man_ – held onto him in sleep, how heartbreakingly happy he’d looked to just find Lister again all those months ago, and then he tried to imagine the guy getting used to life without him again. Lister’s opinion of himself was not overly high, but he accepted that for whatever reason, Rimmer treasured his company uniquely.

As he turned toward the exit, he heard a yelp, the voice familiar. Lister darted into the corridor and looked around, pulling his rifle. His heartbeat accelerated, he had to fight not to simply charge into the medi-bay, but instead to stick his tightly-held gun in first and follow by rapid degrees, looking around. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and whirled to his left.

A tall woman he’d never seen before, roughly his age, stood there, watching Lister with what seemed a mixture of anger and fear. He nearly asked her name, but noticed something in her hand, and he sucked in a breath when he recognized her thumb rubbing the end of an oblong black light bee. On the floor not far away was a small pile of clothes, a familiar weathered leather jacket on top.

His barrel was pointed in her face before he consciously decided what he was willing to do. “Give me that,” he ordered. When she curled her fingers around it and pulled it toward her chest, he released the safety with a loud click and narrowed his eyes. “Now.”

She smiled humorlessly at him, her knuckles tightening as she squeezed harder. Lister fired immediately over her left shoulder, missing it by an inch. “Quit fucking with me,” he ground out icily, swinging the tip of his barrel forward up under her chin with two steps forward. “Hand him over, or lose your head.”

She bared her teeth as if about to speak; Lister jabbed harder, eyeing her fist, wondering if shooting her arm off might work better. As if she could read his mind, her hand opened and the small cylinder fell out, hitting the floor with a little clank. Resisting the urge to check it, he swallowed and found his voice somewhere around his knees. “Who the smeg are-”

She vanished somewhere around “the.” Like a magician’s apparition, she was there – and then she simply wasn’t.

Several seconds passed as Lister found where his breath had gotten off to and ordered it back in his lungs. He hunkered down and laid the rifle aside, reaching for the bee. He’d only looked at the damn thing twice before, but the tiny button seemed to be the same. Holding his breath, he switched it on and waited nanoseconds of eternity for the familiar image to materialize, only yanking his hand back when he realized it was buried in a red-clad chest. “Arn?” he asked, reaching for his shoulders before he remembered they were nothing but light. “Can you change to blue?”

“Huh?” The hologram barely seemed able to speak, looking shocked, mouth open dumbly.

“Solid?” Lister tried again. When there was no change in expression, he snapped his fingers before the hologram’s eyes and barked in desperation, “Rimmer! Change to hard-light!”

That seemed to do the trick. His body shimmered and solidified into the old blue sateen-and-velour uniform, though his expression was still unreadable. Lister fell forward on his knees and gathered the man into his arms, pressing his face into that wonderfully frizzy auburn hair. He couldn’t do anything but weave back and forth – and eventually, he felt arms around him, hands on his back, fingernails digging in. “Arn,” he whispered harshly, realizing he was crying a little only when he had to snort back the phlegm threatening to leak from his nose. He felt Rimmer’s forehead pressing into the side of his neck, and he rubbed his chin and jaw over soft hair before pulling away to tilt Rimmer’s head back and kiss him.

It was rough and hard, and Lister dug his fingers into those curls, cradling the back of Rimmer’s skull. He licked at those lips and let himself be pulled down, long fingers up his shirt, caressing the skin of his back.

He didn’t know how long it was before they broke apart. He was still on his knees to one side of Rimmer’s body, propped on his elbows looking down into warm green-brown eyes, which studied him intently in return. Lister swallowed and forced himself to ask, “What happened?”

“I was … I don’t know, really.” Rimmer reached up and touched his cheek, tracing fingertips lightly near his mouth, and it was about all Lister could do not to suck them in and instead, concentrate. “I heard someone come in behind me; I wasn’t paying attention, thought it was you at first … then I realized it didn’t sound like your footsteps, so I turned around. That’s when Nona’s pager started buzzing.” He zoned out, eyes going to soft-focus for a couple of seconds. “I just glimpsed a woman; she yanked my shirt up and stuck her hand in my chest, and-” Rimmer shook his head. “That’s it.”

“But you weren’t soft-light.”

He shook his head, visibly troubled. “No.”

“Then how could she _do_ that?” he demanded.

“I don’t know!” The Rimmer whine had crept back in, and it both irritated and comforted Lister. “What- How’d I end up here?” Lister sketched out a brief explanation, sitting back on his heels and helping Rimmer sit up again. Rimmer’s expression shifted as Lister talked; when he was done, Rimmer reached up and lifted two plaits that had fallen forward and gently draped them over the back of his shoulder.

“Dave.” The whine was gone, replaced by an uncommon softness.

“Yeah.” Lister stopped himself from running his fingers all over that face and hair. Swallowing back ill-timed lust, he clambered to his feet and helped Rimmer up. “You should get dressed again. We gotta try to find her.” He turned his back while Rimmer willed away his holo-clothes, to be polite, and nearly jumped two minutes later when he felt something brush the back of his ear. A murmured reassurance and hands on his upper arms settled him – or rather, unsettled him in an agreeably different way. “You okay?” Lister asked, inclining his head a few degrees sideways and up to acknowledge the other man.

“Been better,” Rimmer admitted, stepping away, his voice now steady. “We should give Hol and Fiona a description in case they can track her down. And take a closer look at those booths again.”

“Why?” The stasis chambers made Lister uneasy, and he couldn’t shake the association of poking around in them and that … apparition, showing up to make scrap of Rimmer.

“Because I remember something I saw back there – and I think we’re going to find some smegging big holes in the temporal tubing, miladdo.”

*****

They found the thin metal temporal coils leading to the two stasis booths clipped in two. Closer inspection revealed evidence of attempted escape from the booths – the doors were damaged from the inside and the handles on the outside were bent and slightly pulled. Rimmer tapped a handle and nodded. “Thought I saw some damage earlier, but it didn't register.” He guessed chains or rope, or something else organic, had been used to secure them shut from the outside. “If whoever did this used wet rope, any strain against it would’ve strengthened the knots tighter,” he observed sadly. “And if it was long enough ago, the fibers would’ve disintegrated by now and fallen off.”

It was only speculation, of course, but the net result was still two dead humans and a creepy ship, Lister thought. And yet for all that, he still wondered if there was a way they could clear it out. He was _really_ sick of the confinement of the far smaller _Starbug_. He said as much to Rimmer, who gave him an odd look. “What?”

“You know how even after all the stories and movies, there were people who actually bought the Amityville house, to live there?” Rimmer asked.

“That’s because it wasn’t real, man. It didn’t actually happen.”

“Or maybe you’d prefer Europa instead?” Rimmer ignored him. “The Winegarner compound? They always said he hid her head somewhere in the foundation where it couldn’t be found, but you’d find it. Too bad they dug up Crippen’s wife already, eh, Listy?”

“Hey, you thought it was funny when I was getting slimed earlier today!” Lister recalled.

“Nobody tried to squeeze the smeg out of your heart and brain all at once!” Rimmer raised his voice to match.

“Did you see me laughing?” Rimmer said nothing. “This is just a place, Arn – it’s a thing, a ship. We’ve run across too many derelicts with programs still running, and other weird shit. Maybe that woman’s just some sort of advanced hologram or projection.”

“A projection that can stick her hand through a solid-photon body,” Rimmer reminded him, grumpily. “Or even cut a tube and tie a rope. Not exactly negligible, that.”

“Look,” Lister tried to explain, “I’m not takin’ it lightly. Smeg, you _know_ better. But there’s got to be a logical reason.” He pointed at the stasis booths. Then, he studied Rimmer for a moment, cocking his head.

“What?” the taller man wanted to know.

“You’re gonna say they're aliens.”

“They _do_ exist, Dave. I’ve met them! You can’t contradict Ace, who’s been everywhere,” he pointed out, assuming the smirk of the just.

“Here? In this dimension?” Lister pressed. “Extraterrestrial beings?”

“I’M an extraterrestrial being, Lister.” Rimmer folded his arms and stared down at him. “I wasn’t born on Earth-”

“Don’t give me that smeg.” Lister cut him off. “You’re human.”

“Actually, I’m an A.I.,” Rimmer shot back.

Lister held up his hands. “I’m not having this conversation again.” He’d had enough of Rimmer questioning the nature of his own existence to the point of deep reflective depression. “We’re not talking about you, and we don’t even know what we’re dealing with yet. Let’s not go off all cockanonie, here.”

“Non-” Rimmer repeated, remembering something, then pushed his sleeve up and tapped his watch. “Fiona? You there, Nona?”

“Arn!” exclaimed a small disembodied feminine voice. “You’re conscious?”

He glanced at Lister and nodded, then remembered he had to speak. “Um, yes. I got your page awhile ago. Another energy spike, I take it?”

“Bigger than the previous two,” she confirmed. An odd hesitation. “Your bee monitor showed it went offline. What happened?” she demanded.

“Give me a few minutes and I’ll be there to tell you.” He lowered his arm halfway, then raised it again. “Nona, would you look for any other light bees in operation on this vessel? Or any holographic projections at all? See you in a few.”

*****

Not only did Fiona not detect a light bee other than Rimmer’s aboard (“I can’t scan past a duranium shield,” she dryly reminded him, “and there’s plenty on the _Barbie_ that could be hiding one”), Holly wasn’t any more help because he still couldn’t gain access to all ship’s systems. “I’m working on it, all right?” he’d protested. “It’s a sophisticated encryption.”

“But you’ve got an IQ of six thousand,” Rimmer pointed out.

“So? There were ships’ computers with numbers in the five-digits,” Holly retorted. “This could’ve been one. Locked out certain systems before it went kablooey, is probably what happened.”

The wound tension in the hologram’s shoulders could’ve sent _Apollo_ through Earth’s atmosphere, Lister thought, as he rubbed them, standing behind the _Wildfire_ pilot’s seat. Rimmer was slumped forward, head in his hands and elbows on the console, shaking his head and muttering something unintelligible. Lister worked down his back with the heels of his hands, firmly, until he felt Rimmer sigh deeply and begin to lean back. He moved back up to shoulders and upper arms for a while, then up, working his fingers gently into reddish curls. “That’s … really nice,” Rimmer eventually admitted.

When he tilted his head back, Lister leaned over and covered his mouth. Upside-down, he nibbled at Rimmer’s lower lip while Rimmer licked his lower lip and chin a while, before they both turned a bit sideways and resumed more traditional kissing. Lister cupped a hand under his chin, against that long throat, feeling the Adam’s apple bob slightly. He felt movement, but didn’t register it until he was being pulled down, straddling the other man’s lap, strong hands against his back to pull him closer. “Feeling better?” Lister asked.

Rimmer rubbed their noses together. “Partly,” he answered, and Lister felt just what partly. He smirked, shifting in the man’s lap, and Rimmer sighed happily at the friction. There was no hurry in their movements, and they sat for a long while, at first only trading glances in passes. After a time, their eyes settled on one another’s, leading them both to laugh as Lister leaned forward and their foreheads met. After a fashion they quieted down with noses pressed together, eyes closed, silent except for their breathing and the quiet rustle of occasional shifting to get more comfortable. At one point, Lister heard a voice, and frowned as he stirred, licking his lips. He heard it again “… Lister!”

“Hnngh?” he muttered, mouth cottony.

“Did you seriously just fall asleep on me?”

Lister thickly snorted out a “pffffft. Course not.”

“You were _snoring_.”

“No I wasn’t. ‘Cause not sleepy.” He yawned into Rimmer’s face.

The hologram pushed him back a few inches by his shoulders and made a face at Lister’s breath. “Francis David Lister!” he barked.

That woke him up. “The hell’d you call me?”

“Your NAME, you smegger.”

“ _That’s_ not my name!”

“You bloody well told me it was.”

“When?” Lister demanded. It was, but he surely wouldn’t have told anyone that even under threat of having his fingernails ripped out while Kryten tapdanced to “Nice and Nauseating” in the background. “When did I do that?”

“Let’s just say your brain wasn’t entirely focused on speech at the time.” It was Rimmer’s turn to smirk. “So I know you weren’t lying.”

“I can lie anytime I want.”

Rimmer sighed. “Dave, if you’d been Bond, all any villain would’ve had to do to get M’s true agenda was give you a halfway decent blowjob.”

*****

One mild verbal scrap and a decent nap later, Lister’s eyes popped open. He felt like he was being watched, and it didn’t feel like the normal kind – sure enough, he was alone in bed. He looked around, blinking rapidly when he saw the strange man standing at the end of the bed.


	5. Chapter 5

He slowly sat up, shaking the sleep out of his brain. “Who are you?” he demanded. The man said nothing; he simply looked slightly translucent, and noticeably unhappy. Fully-dressed, Lister carefully swung his feet off the side of the bed and stood, never taking his eyes from the man. “Are you with that woman who tried to kill Arn?” Nothing. “What are you? Holograms?” He felt silly, like he ought to start signing in charades or something. “Spirits?” He stepped closer, boldly reaching out to touch the man’s arm at one point; his hand passed right through, as it had holo-Rimmer on their first meeting. Still keeping his eyes on the dark-eyed man, Lister raised his voice and called out, “Holly!”

Lister was aware in his periphery of the bedroom’s vidscreen flickering into life. “Can you see this?” he asked, trying to memorize the man, walking around him.

“My intelligence may be a bit compromised, but my eyesight’s working just fine, Dave. Hang on.” Holly’s visage went still, the way it did when he was temporarily unavailable, like one of those old-time station identification spots.

Suddenly, the man wasn’t there. He vanished. Knowing what to look for, Lister squinted, visually scanning where his torso had been. “Holly! Holly!”

“Hold your knickers up.” The face became animated again. “What?”

“What WAS he?” Lister shook his head. “I don’t see a light bee.”

“That’s awful funny, since I just detected one in the room. It’s still in the room.”

Lister blinked. “My IQ is definitely in the low triple digits, but _my_ eyesight’s workin’ just fine, Hol. It’s not here.”

“Hang on.” Holly went still again, and Lister rolled his eyes, sitting heavily on the end of the bed. While he waited, his eyes continued searching empty air for something out of place, and he chewed absently at the nail of his little finger. He’d started in on the one next to it when Holly spoke again. “Still here, Dave.”

Spitting out the nail, Lister shook his head. “How? Did it roll under the bed, or what?”

“Maybe it’s invisible.”

“Steady on; say that again?”

“The is such a thing as a low-level visibility shield,” Holly answered. “Developed fully in the twenty-first century. But it needs a lot of power to be much bigger than, say, able to cover a light bee. Which means it could cover a light bee.”

Lister stood slowly, reaching out into the air in front of him before remembering something. He peeled the leather half-gloves from his hands and tossed them back on the bed. Hands out as though he were searching for a door in a dark room, he swept the air around him as he moved, methodically, sticking to between his stomach and head level. Holly let this go on for some time before remarking, “Well, it’s finally happened. Had to, I suppose. You’ve gone off your nut.”

Making a shushing noise, Lister kept feeling around as nonthreateningly as he could manage. He felt ridiculous, but there was no way he was about to get slimed again, or drowned, or electrocuted, or lose his … Rimmer, to whatever insane holograms were haunting the _Barbie_. “Where are you,” he muttered under his breath, breaking his own silent vow to stay quiet. “Come out, come-” Two of his fingers made contact with something hard and small, and he lunged a little, closing his fist around it. “RESULT!” he crowed, loosening his fingers just a little to peek between them – he couldn’t see anything, but he definitely felt a bullet-shaped cylinder in his fist. “Holly, can you-”

Before he could finish, he heard a noise in the outer room; thinking it was Rimmer, he raced out to show – tell – him about the light bee. Instead, he nearly ran into Ms. Personality from the medi-bay. And she was _furious_.

“LET HIM GO!” she screamed. Or, would have, if she could’ve produced sound; as it was, it was pretty easy to read her lips.

“What, this?” Lister held up his closed hand and smirked. “Hang on – you want me to let this one go? So he’s important to you, is that it?”

His control over not squeezing the bee hard in reaction, and even to get the hand back behind him, was a testament to how many bar fights Lister had found himself in the middle of at some point or other. His pride noted that when she drove her fist into his stomach, at least he only stumbled backward and didn’t fall on his ass. “Lady,” he wheezed, righting himself, “I don’t want to hit a woman, but do that again …” He managed to get his other arm up to block her next blow, and used it to push forward and drive her away. “Step off!” he barked. “I’m not gonna hurt him, okay? I just want to know who you are!”

She shouted something else without sound, something Lister couldn’t make out this time, and lunged again. He ducked into a roll, going around her, then did it again, this time letting it barrel him into the bedroom. He managed to turn as she came after him and knocked him to the bed, reaching for the hand with the bee; just as desperately, he got his other hand under her chin and pushed her head back, trying to force her off. _Why the hell do these holograms need to be like Superman?_ he wondered in frustration, knowing it was just a matter of time before he was overpowered. _And why aren't they making any sound? Didn't THEY do the screaming and throat-clearing?_

He hadn’t heard the outer door or footsteps through their struggle, so it came as a surprise when she disappeared. The hand that had been forcing so hard up under her chin shot forth and the heel connected with Rimmer’s forehead. _Hard_.

“Hey!” the one hologram on the ship that wasn’t out to spook or smash him howled, stepping back. He rubbed his head, scowling, as Lister sat up. “You all right?”

“Where’d you come from, Mr. Convenient Timing?”

“Nona paged me; she said there was an energy spike here.” Rimmer held up a small light bee, frowning ruefully. “I guess now we know hard-light holograms can reach through each other.”

That reminded Lister; he peered through his fingers again, still seeing nothing but feeling an object. “Do you have an invisibility shield for yours?” he asked.

“Say again?”

When Lister gestured, Rimmer sat next to him, reaching over to poke a finger between Lister’s as he explained in brief what had happened. He pried Lister’s fingers apart a little as the man talked, and messed with it, nodding every so often. Eventually he did something, as the light bee simply appeared in Lister’s hand, plain as day. “I switched him off,” Rimmer explained, “just like I did her. Long as his is running, the shield can be enabled.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Lister admitted.

They sat shoulder to shoulder, each clutching a light bee. “Well, this is a pretty mess,” Rimmer finally said. “We’ve got to figure out what to do with them.”

“Do?” Lister blinked. “They’re off; they’re not causing problems. What’s to ‘do?’”

“We can’t just leave them shut off, Dave.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Lister acknowledged. “We have to boot ‘em back up for interrogation; see if they have any mates that are gonna jump out at us.”

“Not what I meant,” Rimmer said.

Had Lister paid better attention, he would’ve noticed how carefully Rimmer was modulating his tone, or perhaps how tense he’d gone. “I can’t see any other reason for it,” he said out loud, instead of thinking. “Good riddance.”

Without another word, Rimmer took the bee from Lister as he stood, storming out of their borrowed bedroom and through their borrowed outer room out of their borrowed cabin. Lister sat there, open-mouthed, still not getting the sudden anger. _He ought to be glad they’re shut down! A couple of homicidal holograms try to-”_

That was about the point he mentally signed for the delivery of a ton of bricks. “Oh, SMEG.”

*****

Rimmer had given everyone exactly ninety minutes to get settled into empty quarters, waiting in the conference room near the drive room. The two light bees lay on the table; he crossed his arms and leaned forward to rest his chin on them, quietly staring and picking out tiny differences in the devices' manufacture and design. He glanced up when the door opened; it was only Lister. He focused once again on the bees, ignoring the man rounding the big table and taking the seat to his immediate right.

“Rimmer,” Lister said. He repeated his request quietly; still, Rimmer said nothing, didn’t even look over. “Arn, look … I know what made you angry. That’s what I’ve been trying to talk about for the last two days, if you’d just let me. But you’ve got to understand what I really _meant_ ; you can’t be this thickheaded, come on.”

The hologram closed his eyes, wishing the action would also block his hearing. He wasn’t sure how to deal with Lister yet. The man had bothered him since he’d left the quarters they’d appropriated, even coming down to the cargo bay and trying to get inside the _Wildfire_ while Rimmer was sleeping. He’d nearly caved at Lister’s awkward attempt to serenade him with a toy ukulele, just to shut the man up. (Rimmer told himself it was _not_ because he was in any way strangely touched by the gesture; that would be tantamount to giving permission for that damn guitar.) “This meeting isn’t to talk about you,” he finally said. “This isn’t a ‘let’s coddle Listy’ summit.”

“When have you ever coddled me?” Lister demanded.

“I’m not in the mood to talk.”

“That’s funny, ‘cause you told everyone else that’s exactly what you were going to do when they get here.” Lister gestured at the bees. “Arn, one of them tried to kill you; turn you off, end your existence, extinguish your afterlife – whatever you want to call it.” He leaned forward. “That should bother you at least as much as it does me.”

“They’re not lamps you throw out when the wiring crackles a little,” Rimmer muttered. “They have personalities and feelings, and … and desires, and desperation to protect themselves.”

“Okay,” Lister said, leaning back, watching him.

Rimmer glanced sideways at him, suspicious of acquiescence. “And you just want to leave them turned off.”

“I wouldn’t object,” Lister answered, visibly choosing his words with care. “But if that’s not what you want … we could find a way around it.”

Rimmer flicked his eyes to the bees. “Do you remember what I _am_?” he asked.

“Besides a right pain in the backside?” Lister watched him levelly, but with a spark of warmth in his deep brown eyes. “Yeah, I do. But I forget sometimes, too.”

Before Rimmer could speak, the door opened and Kryten, Cat, and Kochanski came in as a group. They looked exhausted and confused, not having had any sleep since returning from their expedition that afternoon, and Rimmer knew he was going to get limited attention. “We’ve got a situation,” he said, gesturing at the light bees, giving everyone the short version of everything that had happened since their departure. “We need to reactivate them and find out what happened, and what we need to do.”

“Do?” Cat asked. He looked around. “You’re saying there’s a murderous lady hologram there and you _want_ to boot her back up? Isn’t Dormouse Cheeks doin’ it for you anymore?”

“I must say, I concur with the Cat,” Kryten piped up. “If she’s unstable enough to try to disable a fellow hologram, what respect is she going to have for a human life?”

“Or me!” Cat pointed out. “Going around sticking her hand in chests is just bad fashion; this isn’t designed to go with blood.” He gestured down at his leopard-print smoking jacket and leather trousers. “I want to _look_ dangerous, not sit next to it for supper!”

“See – it’s not just me that’s worried,” Lister said. “We’ve got enough crew to run this ship; why do we need to boot ‘em up right now? Maybe give the programs some time to rest, check with Hol and see if he can fiddle with it-”

“PROGRAMS DON'T REST!” Smacking the open palm of his hand against the table, Rimmer came out of his chair. “And they’re not smegging programs, or smegging robots, or smegging zoo animals! They’re people. Like ME, you smegging jackholes!” He was trembling with ill-concealed fear and anger. “Is that what you’d do if I got to be difficult? Just shut me down?” He pointedly did not look at Lister, too hurt to dare to see the answer on his face just then.

“Well …” Cat began, tapping his lower lip.

“Take a flying leap, you stupid moggy,” Rimmer muttered, suddenly tired. “Don’t use me as your basis, then. Think of yourselves; would you want to be shut off if something just stopped working properly? Is that humane or ethical?” He shook his head. “Yes, one of them is quite possibly crazy, or even insane. But we haven’t had a chance to talk to her, try to reason with her. They were here first; we can’t just take their ship without permission, and we can’t leave them like this to finish going mad until the power gives out!” Nobody’s mind looked much changed – Rimmer could see the decisions in Cat’s and Kryten’s eyes, and when he ventured a glance at Lister, there was uncertainty there. He was seriously wondering if he’d made a mistake coming back with the man.

In his years as Ace, Rimmer had only been able to consistently depend on his ship and computer to ride to his rescue; even “himself” had been a faulty wager in some situations. But his other lesson was that once in a while the cavalry showed up in weird forms and at just the right time – as was the case today. “He’s right; they’re people. They have just as much right to explain themselves as any of us.” All eyes turned to Kochanski, and she looked at each of them in turn. “You really think I’m going to dismiss a hologram? _My_ Dave is one.” Rimmer eyed Lister in his periphery, gratified to see the Scouser look uncomfortable. “Besides, they’re sentient; they should be given a chance to talk.”

It wasn't something he ever thought he'd be saying, but Rimmer inclined his head and answered, “Yes, thank you … thank you, Kristine.” Furious, he turned on Lister. “Is this what you think of me? Just an appliance to leave off if I go batty?”

Lister made a sound, his patience gone, and hopped up. “Look, I've tried to explain this I don't know how many times. Rimmer! Listen to me – no, really, _listen_ : One of them tried to kill you! And would have, if I hadn't been there to stop her!” He pointed a finger in Rimmer's face. “Instead of accusing me of something, maybe you should be thanking me! But that'd be too much for Ace to admit, wouldn't it?”

“Admit what?”

“That you need help!” He held his arms out and mimed an airplane's wings. “That you don't know everything! You're not flyin' around by yourself anymore, ACE. Needing help is not the worst thing in the multiverse-”

“Lister, I let you help, that's not true.”

“OHHHH! You _let_ me help?” He nearly brayed with a combination of amusement and bubbling anger. “Well, sir, if you're just letting me play at space heroing, and you don't-”

“What the smeg does this have to do with turning off light bees?” Rimmer demanded, confused, upset, and disgusted. “We're talking about treating people like they're _people_ , with some choices and dignity, you bloody stupid little man!”

“That's right, Rimmer! People, not smegging heroes and gods, and martyrs who tie themselves up in knots over 'causes' that aren't even there.” Lister was breathing heavily and felt sweat starting down the back of his neck; he'd cut off those damn plaits someday. “You're talking about oatmeal and apples, here. You want to do a direct comparison, but it's not gonna work. You're not like them; you haven't gone off the deep end and tried to murder innocent people.” He pointed at the bees, trying to lower his voice. “SHE has.”

“So did you, as I recall,” Rimmer snapped. “When the Lows got hold of you?”

“I was being controlled! That wasn't me!”

“How do you know this is her?” Rimmer demanded, waving at the bees. “How do you know there isn't a bug that can be worked out, or maybe something happened to her that made her this way?” It was his turn to point at Lister, aggressively. “Maybe it's that body we found in stasis!”

“What body?” Kochanski interrupted; it didn't slow them down.

“Maybe they both are!” Rimmer continued.

Kochanski, Kryten, and Cat all exchanged a look: Two bodies?

“We don't know that; you're jumping to conclusions,” Lister countered. “It's dangerous to turn them back on; she's jumped both of us.”

“Oh, I'm jumping to conclusions? Wellllll … I wrongly jumped to the conclusion you gave a smeg about me- So maybe you're right. Maybe I _do_ do that.” Lister's mouth dropped open as he tried to marshal the words to counter such a thickheaded remark. “Maybe I'm nothing more than the most advanced toy, on a ship FILLED with 'em.”


	6. Chapter 6

Lister said the first thing that passed through his brain. “You stupid, blind, son of a bitch!”

Something in Rimmer's expression quavered, then turned hard. “Thanks a lot, Lister.” His voice had an edge as he headed for the door. “Legion would be glad to know, I'm sure, that I'm such an entertaining time-waster.”

“Don't you leave!” As Lister ran out after him, he caught the other threes' faces; they were looking down at the table, studiously avoiding eye contact or even the pretense of conversation among themselves. Lister was reminded of how much he hated people splashing their personal drama all over everyone else they knew; he pushed aside his annoyance as he hurried down the corridor. “Arn, get back here!”

He didn't hear what Rimmer was saying until he was on him. “I don't want to talk to you!” he yelped, as Lister grabbed his shoulder and made him turn.

“YOU are not them!” Lister shot back. “Okay – yeah, I'm playing favorites. I prefer you over them. I don't want to have to worry about them all the time, but yes, I _would_ worry about you if you went crazy-”

 _“Don't you get it, yet, you granite-headed gimboid?”_ Rimmer snapped, pulling his arm away and backing up. “I don't want to be the exception that proves a rule for you.” He narrowed his eyes. “I don't want you to have a rule like _that_ about _this_.”

Lister watched him turn and walk away, keeping the rest of the sentence to himself until Rimmer was out of hearing range. “Because, I love you,” he finished lamely. “Even if you don't understand me.”

*****

That night and the next two days were a haze for Lister. He made himself useful helping Kryten corral Cat into doing a more thorough inventory of food and necessities in vacuum storage. Sometimes, Kryten would disappear for hours, longer than needed for recharging or laundry; Lister couldn’t bring himself to ask where he’d go off to, because he already knew. It was likely the same reason he hadn’t seen Kochanski since the argument.

More important, it was the same reason he hadn’t seen Rimmer.

On the third evening, Lister went to the medi-bay, guided by a gut feeling; the inner room was deserted, except for Rimmer, slumped over on a counter running the semicircle of a glass half-dome looking down into a shallow operating bay. Lister moved quietly, not wanting to wake him right away. He noticed movement through the glass and walked over. He stood for long minutes, simply looking, before he took a deep breath and quietly let himself in and down the small ramp into the blindingly white room.

One of the two figures inside watched him. The man’s expression was a practiced poker face, giving away nothing; instead, Lister realized he could hear – _hear_ – the woman muttering, pacing the other side of the room along the back wall. Lister stuck to the curved front wall, keeping his eyes on her. When he was a few feet away, he cleared his throat. “Hey.”

She didn’t vary her small back-and-forth paces. He had to call to her three more times before she even looked his way. Her eyes narrowed, her fists clenching, her nostrils flaring as she huffed in his direction – but she didn’t charge him, which was improvement over what he’d braced himself to receive. He tapped his chest. “I’m Dave,” he said. “You and me, we didn’t start out so well.” He glanced to the man before giving her his attention again. “You have a name?” She said nothing and he held up both hands in a sort of surrender. “Look, you’re pissed at me for some reason. That’s okay, since I’m not too wild about you, either. I don’t go around pulling guns on people, but you were hurting my … killing Rimmer, and I can’t just watch that. Maybe you didn’t mean it, but I thought you were-”

“She can’t understand you.” The tired voice was American of some sort, Lister guessed.

He dragged his eyes over to the man. “She can’t hear me?”

“Oh, she can hear. She just can’t fathom what you’re going on about.”

Lister took a few side-steps back toward him. “Are you both holograms, or what?”

“We are now. Not always, though.” Lister figured as much, but kept silent. “I suppose I should apologize for Althea doing all those things to you. She doesn’t like intruders. Hates ‘em.” He sighed. “I think she tried to take your friend’s light bee for me – he’s a solid form. I’m not – but she is.”

Lister inclined his head slightly toward Althea, who’d gone back to pacing and muttering unintelligibly. “She your …?” He let it hang, not wanting to insult with the wrong relationship.

“We got married right before the ship left Earth.” The fellow grinned, his mind clearly in the past. “Probably more accurate to say I’m hers. Or was, anyway. She’s the one who used to do most of the talking.” He frowned sadly, not looking directly at Lister.

He wasn’t sure how to phrase his next question. “Were you both … y’know, alive, then?”

“Oh, you have no idea,” he rhapsodized. “I was the envy of every guy I knew. Look at her – she could’ve done a lot better than some second-class trauma nurse. But she picked ME.”

He looked so happy; Lister bit down on all the obvious questions and nodded. This, at least, he could relate to. “Least you’re not one of those vending techs, eh?” he parried. The fellow only grinned at the floor and shrugged. “What’s your name?”

“Lyle.”

Lister waited for the rest, but he offered no more. “I’m Dave,” he answered. “Generally people just call me Lister, but the smeghead back there’s got a lot more colorful names for me.” He jerked a thumb in the sleeping Rimmer’s general direction. “Tell me about Althea.”

And so, Lyle did. He related the tale of how they met while arguing to buy the last statue in some cheesy tourist shop, and how he’d agreed to let her have it if she would go out with him. As he talked about her accomplishments, her pre-marriage career as a cryomicrobiologist, her prankster nature and loud laughter, Lister sneaked looks at the Amazon blonde every so often out of the corner of his eye. She was indeed beautiful, and clearly possessed of some sort of warped intelligence – he guessed the warping was what had happened in the intervening three million years. From the story, he worked out that they had married perhaps fifteen years after the explosion aboard _Red Dwarf_.

And then Lyle came to the end of his happy tale – the part where he and she had gone into stasis for their year “out.” The Mattel-Jeffrey Corporation kept relatively small crews on their delivery/marketing ships so that each year they cruised the solar system, one-fifth could go into the dozen stasis booths, including the captain and four first officers specifically designated to each take charge in succeeding rotations. This allowed each crew member the chance to steal back a year from Father Time on a five-year tour, so that by the time they returned to Earth or their chosen interstellar colony they would only have aged four years. (Of course, it didn’t hurt that those in stasis cost the corporation nothing but base wages; The Mattel-Jeffrey Corporation was nothing if not practical.)

Lister let Lyle brood for perhaps two minutes before taking a few steps to lean sideways against the operating table and cross his arms, trying to get more comfortable. It was an effort to put his back to Althea, but she seemed pathetically ineffective just now, and he had a feeling he didn’t want to look at her for this next part. “You got stuck in stasis, somehow,” he guessed, “and then brought out. How long?”

“I’ve forgotten.” Lyle shook his head. “It’s been – I don’t even know anymore. It’s been … thousands, of years, since we were reanimated.” Lister sucked in a breath. “Records showed there was some sort of disease after we went in – spread through the ship. Quarantine broken. Everybody died but us. The ship just drifted, after that. I think Kenny might’ve stayed conscious to pilot for a while, but he wasn’t online when we came out of stasis.”

“Kenny?”

“Ship’s computer. Well, KEN – Kinetic-Enabled Neuroprocessor.” It was Lister’s turn for a neutral expression. _A computer named Ken running the_ Barbie _? Who had been the Captain – some teenager named Skipper?_ “He either turned himself off or the agenoids did it.”

“Agenoids?” Lister blinked, feeling icy cold in his stomach. They’d been mass produced shortly after he left Earth, he learned far later from Kryten – murderous, man-made super soldiers with no conscience and no human-preserving directives, eventually rounded up and ejected into deep space by a sentient species unable and unwilling to take responsibility for what they’d created.

“Agenoids.” Lyle trained his eyes down on his hands, opening and closing. “Who do you think woke us up?” Lister kept quiet, not wanting to hear the rest of this but unwilling to say anything to prolong the story beyond what had to be told for his understanding. “So happy to find humans so long after they thought we were all dead and gone. They tortured and killed the other ten.” He took a breath. “Us, once they figured out we were together, they beat and stabbed and drained of blood until we were too weak to fight back … and then they locked us in stasis, cut the lines and piped in oxygen so we’d stay conscious, and took turns peering in at us for a few days while we died.”

Lister swallowed an acid taste.

“They revived us as holograms.” The dark-haired man didn’t raise his eyes. “I got one of the ship’s, a soft-light; they gave her a hard-light one they’d brought with them.” Lyle did look up at that, a seething anger in his tight expression. “Can’t do much to someone who can’t be touched … and I can’t do anything for someone who _can_ be.” He left the rest unsaid; Lister felt moisture pricking the backs of his eyes. “They left after a few years. After Althea …” Lyle trailed off briefly, looking away, and Lister shut his eyes, feeling something wet spill over onto his cheeks. “The only way I know how we died is they recorded it and made us watch. Our discs were made before that, of course.” He paused. “Told us what they were gonna do next to us, after making us watch our own murders.”

Forcing himself to open his eyes, Lister straightened up and rubbed at his eyes. “Christ,” he muttered. “How the hell- I mean, how-” He sniffled and cleared his throat, regaining his voice. “And that was – how long? Thousands of years?” Had they been on all that time? “You’ve been conscious that long?”

“After a while of watching her, I couldn’t let her be that way anymore. I figured out how to set the ship to alert me only if another vessel got within a certain range. It was only supposed to wake me up, not us both. But this system’s millions of years old; think that’s what knocked out our audio a few days ago, too.”

“Yeah, we heard you a couple of-” Lister felt the dull numbness of shock settling into the pores of his empathy and anger.

“I couldn’t stop her,” Lyle interrupted, sounding infinitely weary. “Or tell you. I can’t. I can’t touch her. All I can do is watch and try to talk to her, try to explain things she can’t understand anymore. Not since her breakdown.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Lister caught sight of Althea’s back as she paced, quickly turning back to Lyle as she whirled, before he had to see her mad face one more time. “I wanted you guys left off,” he told Lyle, shaking his head. “I thought she was killing Rimmer – I didn’t know.”

“She might have been.” It obviously pained Lyle to realize this. “There’s no way she would’ve ever done that before. Never. Althea’s not- She wasn’t that way,” he corrected himself. “And she’s not ever going to be that way again.”

Lyle turned his back, walking to the other corner of the room. Lister knew he didn’t want to stay another minute; not another second. He hurried up the ramp and out, forgetting the sleeping Rimmer as he slammed the door behind him, taking a few deep breaths of stale air and blinking to readjust to the far dimmer observation room. He couldn’t see very well, so he jumped a little at the familiar voice that came out of the shadows. “Thank you.”

Lister’s chest still hurt, pulse pounding, but he managed, “For what?”

“For getting your head on straight.”

“Why them?” he demanded. “Those two? Random chance? The only married couple?” He didn’t expect an answer; who would know that but those engineered murdering bastards?

He had to get out, back to somewhere that wasn’t _here_. He was almost in the corridor, but paused with his hand on the door when he heard Rimmer’s voice again. “Probably, Listy, because they found out she was the captain.”

*****

Rimmer waited less than an hour before he stood outside the door of the quarters he’d shared with Lister up until a few days ago. Rather than letting himself in or sounding the tweety “doorbell” inside, he knocked at the metal, preferring the solidity. Within, he could hear a faint voice call for the door to open.

As he walked in, Lister stood, his expression a mix of visible hesitation and relief. Despite it being still rather early in the evening, Rimmer wanted nothing more than to fall asleep on him; he suspected his bee was low on battery because he hadn’t been sleeping to recharge, and he knew he looked gaunt and exhausted.

Lister watched as Rimmer settled heavily into the room’s soft chair. He took a couple of steps closer and leaned back against the arm of the small sofa, perching. “How’ve you been?” Rimmer asked.

"Like hell." He didn’t feel like lying to Rimmer just now.

"That makes two of us."


	7. Chapter 7

Lister rubbed his hands on his legs, not sure what to say about everything that had happened. He finally managed, "I'm sorry. Sorry."

"Thank you," Rimmer rumbled. "I wasn't fishing for it, but I appreciate it. I'm sorry, too."

He shook his head. "You weren't wrong."

"Neither of us were, in a weird-arse way. Both wrong, both right."

Lister stood, tugging down nervously on his t-shirt. "So – you want tea, or something?"

"Tea sounds nice." Rimmer let his head fall back and his eyes closed. "Just about as good as the sound of your voice."

Lister nodded, though nobody was watching, and went to the small in-room food dispenser; it was one of the first systems they'd made sure could be repaired and useful. He called up some honey as he fished out one of the bags of honest-to-goodness tea they'd found in vacuum storage and heated some water in another compartment of the food dispenser. It gave him something to do with his hands for the moment. "So, what'd you find out?" he called back over his shoulder. "Other than what I already know, I mean."

Rimmer hesitated for a few moments before answering. "Another backup of their personality discs from before the invasion. My guess is the agenoids didn’t know they were there.”

"So you can restore them to what they were before all that smeg Lyle told me about happened."

" _If_ he consents." Another sigh. "If I were in his place, I'd definitely choose such a thing for the other person, but for myself? That's a tougher question."

"Why not?" Lister rinsed out a mug, then poured steaming water over the bag in it. "If he's going to regress her, why would he want to stay as miserable and remember everything she can't?"

"Well, for one, I haven't asked him yet. For another ... all knowledge comes with a price, Lister. Sometimes, the price is so close to the knowledge that you can't just rub it out."

He waited until he finished tea-ing Rimmer's drink, then transferred the bag to his own cup of water, added honey to Rimmer's, and carried them both over to the seats. "What possible knowledge could he have gained that would make him happy to stay this way, if she's the way she _used_ to be?"

"How to recognize and avoid another attack, for one. Knowing that he loves her enough that he's stuck with her all this time; I don't know. The joy of seeing her whole again, perhaps?"

"Hmm." Lister dipped his teabag. "But what about her, eh? Say she's recovered, she's normal again, relatively sane – but he's still like this. Time's passed for him, but not her – he knows _so_ much more than she does. You don't think that'd get to them after a while?"

"I'm not denying it. The point is, though, that it's not my choice to make. It's not you and me up there, it's Lyle and Althea."

"Did you ask him yet?"

"I said I hadn't." Rimmer sipped at his tea, forgiving the repetition. "I'm not going to do such a thing without everyone there to witness the answer." He shook his head. "There's no room for error when you're talking about the entire restructuring of people's lives and memories."

"No room for error? Rimmer, life is about error. There's no way to keep them on with any sort of ... fix, without some error being made. It may not be yours, sure, maybe that guy's – but nothing's perfect. And you can't think you can make it that way," he quickly added. "This isn't something you can Ace on through."

"Being Ace is what taught me how dangerous it is to play with someone's life. I don't want to breeze through it, I want to take things at a snail's pace and make sure everything is completely clear and of their own free will."

"That's fine – but don't expect they're not going to have problems, whichever way he goes, okay?" Lister kept dunking his teabag, thinking. "I don’t know ... maybe if he chooses to be restarted, he could record a message they could watch later. Something where he explains what he wants to say, in his own words – they're going to wonder where we came from, anyway, and why they're so far out in deep space. Better he explains it to himself and her, than stick us with the whole of it afterward?"

Rimmer blinked; he hadn't thought of that. "That ... that is an incredibly good idea," he mused. "I like that option immensely."

Lister couldn't help it; he beamed. He was used to solving problems, just not getting credit from Rimmer for doing so. "That way, he can decide if he wants to say what happened to her, or if he just wants to bypass that and say she died or was shut off accidentally, or whatever." He exhaled heavily. "And we'll all have to swear to never say anything about what's happened, around them."

"Cat's probably the only one we'd have an issue with," Rimmer yawned, "as he wouldn't care enough one way or the other to stay silent or not."

"We just have to make him understand it'll keep the peace and keep him in Krispies and crawlspaces if we can convince them to let us stay on the ship." He put his tea aside. "That's the second thing; do we ask if we can stay before or after this? If we ask before, you know he'll just forget whatever he says. I think we should wait 'til after."

"Another very good point. If we wait until after, there's no ambiguity."

"I'm just full of 'em tonight."

"You're full of something, that's for sure," Rimmer snorted out of habit. "Hopefully not curry; I don't want to be gassed out of bed."

Out of reflex, Lister gave him the two-fingered salute – then dropped his hand. "You're staying?"

"If you don't mind."

"I never kicked you out" came to mind, but flitted on by, as Lister realized he'd rather not sound like a jackass. "Yeah," he nodded, watching the way Rimmer watched him. He felt his face warm. "I don't mind at all."

"Thanks, Dave." The weariness of the past several days was suddenly visible upon him. "Missed you."

Now that he was watching, he couldn't take his eyes off of Arn – the way his long fingers cradled the mug and rubbed a path around half of the rim, the sweep of his eyelashes as he looked down, the pronunciation of cheekbones under dark eyes. "I'm glad you're back," he said, sincerely.

"Haven't been sleeping well." He put aside his cooling tea on the table next to the chair, and leaned forward to rub his face. "It's too cold, too empty, and too quiet."

Setting his own cup down, Lister reached for Rimmer’s hand. When he looked up, Lister stood and pulled him into his arms. He felt a fine tremble going through Rimmer’s body, and tightened his grip. “I love you.” There was no other way for Lister to feel about him, and he was done treating his emotions as anything casual. “C’mon, sit down.”

They more or less fell on the sofa. Rimmer pulled back a bit. “You-” he began.

“Yeah.”

“You do?”

“Didn’t I just say I did?” Lister resisted the urge to laugh, to get rid of the bubbly, light feeling in his limbs.

Rimmer kissed him, hard and immediately and for a good twenty seconds or so before panting, “Me too.”

“Well, I figured.” Lister did chuckle this time. “Otherwise, you’d have been out the door and screamin’ down the hallway.”

“I might do that anyway, just to tell everyone.” Lister rewarded him with another quick kiss, and Rimmer’s shoulders began to shake – this time, with laughter. It was an odd sound, but good; he intended to get Rimmer to make that noise a lot more often.

*****

“This is because you want to stay, isn’t it?” Lyle’s eyes swept across all five of them, settling finally on Lister, even though it was Rimmer who’d posed the question. “You want the ship.”

“Well … yeah.” It was stupid and insulting to deny it; even if they had to make their case again later, Lyle deserved the truth. “But we’d like to help you, too. Least we think it’d be helping. And it’s not like we ‘want’ the ship. We’d just like to stay on here. With you guys. The ship we have is really, _really_ small.”

“I’d be stupid to say no to the reboot.” Lyle frowned, crossing his arms tightly. “Wouldn’t I? I mean, I'd have to be barking mad to want to stay this way.”

“That'd be some special crazy, all right,” Cat agreed, cheerfully; on a full belly, nothing got him down.

Kochanski elbowed him in the ribs. “What he means is, why would you agree to wiping her memory and restarting her hologram, and leave yours in this state?”

Rimmer frowned at her. “We agreed we weren't going to try influence his decision.”

“He's an adult, Arnold.” She gestured at Lyle; Lister wondered if either noticed how intently the man was watching them. His attention was no longer divided since he’d consented to turning Althea’s bee off for the time being. “Nobody's telling him what to do. But it'd be disingenuous for us to stand back and say 'No, we don't have an opinion, course not.' He's not stupid.”

“It's just – it's his life. Death! It's his death. Not ours.”

“I know that,” Kochanski retorted, a touch defensive now. “And so does Lyle.”

“You can't make somebody else's decisions for them, is all. It can be screwed up, choosing things for other people; that's the one thing I learned, being out there by myself.”

Lister rubbed his nose. “Not _all_ by yourself.”

“Come again?”

“Well – you weren't all by yourself, were you? You had a genius computer to help, right?” he pointed out.

“There was plenty I had to figure out on my own,” Rimmer huffed. “I didn't _live_ on my ship; I got out and around, away from her, most of the time.”

There was something that sounded suspiciously like an insult flirting with that remark. “What, like Hol made all our decisions for _us_ or something?”

“He did – she – Holly – did answer a lot of questions for you,” Rimmer said.

“We lost Holly a few years back,” Lister pointed out. “Don't pretend you weren't there.”

“And then you got him back with the nanobots.”

“And we ended up in prison!”

“Exactly! You're the one touting the benefits of a know-all computer having your back, for some smegging reason!”

“No, what I was saying, was, you had guidance from a consciousness that knew more about what you were doing than you did,” Lister corrected, annoyed.

“You implied Fiona was making my decisions for me.”

“I was just pointing out you're not the only person in the universe who's ever had to make a hard decision, Rimmer! YOU had some help, thanks to the fact you had a whole line of Aces to learn from. Some of us don't have that backup.”

Rimmer cleared his throat and muttered, “I'd like to see what _you_ would've done, when you found out some mark's daughter had watched you assassinate her father from the closet, and then tried to kill you afterwards for it.”

Lister opened his mouth to respond, then caught sight of Lyle watching them intently. He shut it and swallowed whatever had been about to bypass his brain and shoot out between his teeth; he had made up to Rimmer less than an hour ago. “The point IS,” he gritted out, “it doesn't hurt the guy to hear what we've got to say. Does it?” He directed this last bit at Lyle himself.

“Is this all of you?” the hologram wondered, eyes sweeping them. “Only five?”

“Plus a couple of ship computers, yes,” Rimmer spoke up, shooting Lister a challenging look. The Scouser said nothing, hands in his pockets, raising an eyebrow at him with exaggerated calm; Rimmer had the grace to look somewhat sheepish, Lister was glad to note.

“If you're really wanting Mr. Lyle to make an unbiased decision, perhaps we should leave him to his thoughts for a period of time,” Kryten suggested. He'd volunteered to stand back behind everyone else after Lister had briefly sketched out the holograms' encounter with agenoids, so as not to make them feel threatened by his mechanical nature. “If we are not 'hanging around,' perhaps the pressure he feels to lean one way or the other will be lessened.”

“What I really want to know is why we should want you with us.”

Lister blinked, then tilted his head and studied Lyle. Okay, so the guy wasn’t stupid; another mark in his favor. “Have we done something wrong?”

“It’s not any specific objection.” Lyle shook his head. “I – just want to know what’s so great about you.”

“Besides the fact we’re the last two living humans in existence?” Kochanski broke in, gesturing between herself and Lister. “And a fellow hologram?”

“Is that enough for you to want to share your home with somebody?”

“Well, no,” Kochanski admitted. “But won’t you just forget it as soon as you’re rebooted?”

“He hasn’t decided to DO that yet,” Rimmer argued.

While Kochanski was shooting him a look, Lyle waved his hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing; you said if I restarted, I could record a message for us before that. I do that, I’m going to give myself advice on whether you’d be good to live with or not. Besides.” The dark-skinned man smiled for the first time any of them had seen. “I want to see if you’re willing to go through this twice. Shouldn’t hurt any of you.”

 _Definite smartass,_ Lister determined. _We can always use more of THOSE._ “Okay,” he began, agreeably. “I play a mean game of pool, appreciate a good lager – or even a bad one – I play a wicked guitar, I shower regularly – I DO,” he interrupted himself, snapping his fingers and pointing at Rimmer without taking his eyes from Lyle. “I’m not high-maintenance, and have an utterly _fantastic_ sense of humor.”

Rimmer arched one eyebrow. “What are you, the Miss September centerfold? What kind of abilities list is that?”

Lister smiled sweetly, batted his eyes rapidly, and answered in a falsetto, “My turn-offs include mouthy men who have to sleep on sofas, and nosy smeggers.” He used his hand to mime an overly-chattering mouth; in return, Rimmer made a rude gesture at him involving his inner elbow and a couple of fingers, but smirked.

“Okay, you’re entertaining,” Lyle acknowledged. “But anyone’ll tell you only the good stuff about themselves.”

Four sets of eyes swung to Rimmer, who shrugged expansively to acknowledge the attention. “I’ll list every fault I have,” he said. “Telling people what’s wrong with yourself is always preferable to having to hear it _from_ them.”

“So, somebody else tell me something good about this guy.” Lyle glanced over all of them, his eyes landing on Cat. “Tell me what you like about – Arnold, is it? Tell me something good.”

“ME?” The felinoid touched his own chest and gave Rimmer the sideways eye. “That buggy green rustbucket isn’t looking so bad right now-”

“Cat,” Lister spoke up chidingly.

“Well – he _did_ leave for a while,” Cat reconsidered. “He came back, but he was still gone for some time.” He caught Lister slowly shaking his head at him. “Oh, all right – the smeghead’s clean. His stink won’t bother you monkeys; he takes lots of showers. Even if half of ‘em are with Gerbil Face over there. Hey!” Cat grinned, showing his fangs. “He conserves water, too! That’s TWO things. Can I go nap now?”

“So he’s cleaner than you, you’d say?” Apparently, Lyle had noticed Cat’s fastidiousness in the short time he’d observed the creature.

“Hey. Let’s not go crazy.” Cat shot his cuffs and straightened his bolero tie. “Nobody smells better than the Cat. ‘Cept maybe Officer Bud-Babe sometimes.” He licked the back of his hand and used it to smooth a thick lock of hair back behind his ear.

Lyle shook his head, looking puzzled. “I don’t mean any offense – but what are you? You’re not human.” He squinted at Cat’s mouth. “Vampires weren’t around three million years ago … not for real.”

The tall felinoid stood even taller. “I am the Cat,” he declared, slowly; hadn’t he just said this? Monkeys sure were slow on the uptake, including goalpost-heads. He frowned as the lack of the “goalpost” occurred to him. “Wait – if you’re a hologram, where’s your H?” He pressed two fingers to his own forehead in illustration.


	8. Chapter 8

Lyle shook his head. “That barbaric practice went out with passage of the Hologram Rights Bill when I was a teenager.”

“It did?” Rimmer leaned forward, interested.

“Yeah. Some senator’s kid was killed delivering some-” Lyle made a subtle face and hesitated before continuing, “-agenoids, to a war zone, and when he was brought back as a hologram, she didn’t like how her son was being treated. So, she presented and championed this big bill, and got all kinds of support; passed all the states it needed. People were just ready for it. Ended up being the Thirty-Second Amendment. And since Mattel-Jeffrey’s an American company, they had to fall in line.”

“When you were a teenager?” Lister did a quick mental calculation. “But that … isn’t that like right after the _Dwarf’s_ explosion?”

Lyle nodded. “That’s part of what got it passed, too. Eleven thousand people die, Dave, they leave behind a _lot_ of grieving relatives – suddenly they don’t want to think of their son or wife, or whatever loved one, being called a ‘dirty deadie’ and treated like a second-class citizen. You know, if they could just see them again, have them back, even as a hologram? Well, you can guess. Got a lot of people riled up for holograms’ rights.”

“Huh.” It was the only noise Rimmer made. Lister watched him closely, trying to guess at what was going through his mind.

“Next.” Lyle was watching Rimmer anyway, so he said, “What about him?” pointing to Kryten. “Tell me something good about him.”

“Maybe I’d better-” Lister began, concerned.

Rimmer held up his hand, cutting him off. “I can handle this, Listy.” But he didn’t say anything right away; instead, he seemed to be deep in thought.

“If I may, sir,” Kryten addressed Lyle after a long silence, “you could always switch me off and keep me in storage until Mr. Rimmer comes up with a compliment.”

“Shut up, you bolt-brained Asimovian oddity; can’t you see I’m about to say something nice about you?” Rimmer snapped.

“I was merely recognizing, sir, that pleasant thoughts do not dwell readily in the forefront of your consciousness, and I am attempting to accommodate that limitation to our maximum mutual benefit,” Kryten huffed.

Beside him, Kochanski sighed heavily.

Rimmer snapped his fingers. “That!” he declared. “He’s very methodical. And self-sacrificing; he does put his own safety last in consideration of others around him,” he said, proud for having thought of something so quickly. “And he loves to clean. You will never have a dirty restroom again, or a cold meal.” He paused. “Except you might get some groinal-socket tea with it.”

Kryten looked visibly grateful. “Mr. Rimmer! Do you really think all that of me?” He sounded like he was about to cry. “Oh, sir, thank you!”

Lyle’s attention was fixed on Kochanski now; she watched him levelly, hands on her hips, refusing to cross her arms or otherwise broadcast any sort of deference. “Kristine, right?” She nodded. “That was my aunt’s name.” He pointed at Lister. “Dave, here. Tell me something you like about him.”

Rimmer coughed and cleared his throat; when all eyes fixed on him, he was leaning back against the wall, concentrating on the ceiling as if spellbound by the track lighting. Kochanski ignored the momentary interruption. “Dave? Well, let’s see – he’s a nice guy. Very helpful, do anything you need. He’d give you the shirt off his back.”

A small noise slid out before Rimmer clamped down on it. “I think there’s a bulb out up there,” he pointed at the ceiling, to cover.

“He’s very considerate, too.” Kochanski cut her eyes to Rimmer, who now appeared to be silently counting bolts around the borders of the white ceiling tiles. “Willing to listen to your problems; won’t butt in and tell you what to do unless you ask for advice. Then, he really gets in there, and-” She was cut off by another cough. “That’s enough,” she snapped at Rimmer. “What is your problem?”

“Hmm?” He pulled his attention away from the ceiling, attempting to frown cluelessly. “Nothing.”

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me, mister.” She was leaning forward, pointing at him. “What do you have against _me_? You’re the one Dave’s thrown in his lot with! This one’s _never_ eyed me the way I see him looking at you half the time. Not my fault you don’t have eyes in the back or side of your head,” she muttered.

If he’d gotten naked, donned a top hat, and started doing the soft-shoe to Sinatra in a spotlight during halftime at the Super Bowl, Lister couldn’t have been any more on display than he felt right then. His cheeks steamed like the surface of Venus and his eyes felt wider than Petersen’s blind spot for gorgeous Asian ladies. “Eh?” he squeaked out, swallowing.

Lyle burst out laughing at Lister. “I have never seen a brother turn _that_ red,” he explained, as the mirth eventually subsided, rubbing at his wet eyes. “Oh, man – Thea’d love this.”

A strange sound made Lister look toward Rimmer. He had one hand splayed over his face, holding the elbow with his other hand, and his upper body was shaking hard. Another few sounds strangled past his fingers, and Lister eventually deduced it was a heavily stifled series of snorting guffaws. To his surprise, Kochanski started laughing, too; this made Rimmer look up through his fingers at her. They were both briefly silent – right before they launched into another mutual round of loud merriment, their laughter filling the room and bouncing giddily off the sterile walls. Kryten looked confused; Cat just ignored it all, having taken off his jacket, and was methodically and contentedly licking the collar clean.

“Hey!” Lister felt vaguely offended, but didn’t know why. He shook his head at Lyle, who was grinning at the entire tableau, arms crossed as he stood in the center of the operating theatre. “Isn’t that enough for you, now?”

“Soon as you tell me one more thing.” He waited for everyone to settle down, keeping his eyes on Lister. “Why him?”

“Pardon?”

Lyle gestured at Rimmer. “Why are you with him?”

“Well, I-” Lister shut his mouth. It was a hell of a question. Had anyone asked him “why Krissie?” way back when, he would’ve happily conducted an afternoon seminar on the topic, complete with pie graphs and handouts. Maybe it was their stormy shared past; or, he supposed, he still felt some residual discomfort at the whole homosexual thing. _That’s bisexual_ , his brain chimed in.

 _Thanks_ , he told it. _That helps._

_So just don’t think about his dick. Think about what else there is to the bloke._

“It’s really not fair putting someone on the spot like that,” Rimmer finally said, addressing Lyle. “I mean, that’s kind of private. Nobody’s asking you _why_ you’re with Althea.”

Lyle opened his mouth, closed it, and shrugged. “All right.”

Lister realized he’d given little thought before the last few days as to why he’d stuck at trying to make something with Rimmer work for half a year. It was more than just availability, but he’d never defined it even for himself, beyond what he’d said to Rimmer earlier this evening, very briefly. And here Rimmer was, not only not forcing him to answer, but defending his damning silence in front of everyone they knew. Watching Rimmer offer a conciliatory half-smile and shrug at the other hologram, he knew the warmth in his chest right now had nothing to do with embarrassment. _You shouldn’t have to settle for what you can get_ , he thought. “Look, I love him, okay? He’s annoying as all smeg a lot of the time, and he gets up on his high horse and lectures and corrects and occasionally tries to lord it over us … but he’s changed a lot since I met him. You have,” he added, directly to Rimmer now, who was watching him with an odd expression that he couldn’t translate. “You’re a lot more humble than you used to be. And braver, and more ready to be part of the team. You can take a joke better. And, you’re just …” He trailed off, settling into a lopsided smile he suspected looked more like a goofy grin than he would’ve liked. “You’re _you_. For some weird reason, you’re what I like.”

There was no mystery in Rimmer’s expression as Lister finished. He was smiling – a genuine expression of pleasure, not a smirk or a grimace masquerading as a smile held hostage. The effect softened his eyes, accentuated his cheekbones, and seemed to thaw him by twenty degrees. “You sentimental git,” he finally said, with an affection that made Lister grin.

The calm, thick quiet was broken by what sounded like the beginnings of an air raid siren, gradually scaling down into merely a high-pitched lamentation. “HE’S GOING TO START DOING STUFF FOR MR. LISTER!” Kryten did his version of openly weeping. “AND HE WON’T NEED ME!” He turned to Lyle and beseeched him. “Oh, Mr. Lyle, you really need to let us stay. This ship is FILTHY. I could really find my purpose here … SINCE I’M GOING TO BE CAST ASIDE LIKE AN OLD VEGA, OTHERWISE!”

Kochanski was about to say something, but was cut off by Cat’s gagging and horking, leaning forward until he finally hacked up a hairball and expectorated it upon the floor. “Ahhhh!” the felinoid exhaled loudly, looking pleased with himself. “That’s a _big_ one. No wonder I was feeling so bad!”

Lister gave Lyle a sickly smile. “Can we have at least an hour to leave?”

*****

“I can’t believe he let us stick around to see the reboot,” Rimmer said to Lister, leaning back in the chair beside him.

“I can’t believe he let us stick around to _do_ the reboot.” Lister crossed one ankle over his other knee. “Especially after Kryten whipped out his groin hose to clean up that hairball.”

They were back in the conference lounge waiting on everybody else, eyes on the two small, still bees resting on the far end of the table before them, on a folded shirt so as not to roll off. Holly and Fiona were scouring their discs for scratches or other abnormalities to repair. Cat was off most likely diddling his own hand and changing suits three times, Kryten was scrubbing a kitchen to prepare a very late dinner, and Kochanski was doing a quick and dirty sweep of the drive room navigation systems – after a long bath behind a locked door, in quarters devoid of anything male.

“Listy?”

He looked over at the quiet tone. “Yeah?”

“Don’t let me stay like that.” He shook his head. “I’m giving you permission – just don’t let it happen. Reboot me and never tell me you did, if it does.”

He lifted his arm and slid it around Rimmer’s shoulders. “Okay,” he agreed. “But it’ll never happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do. Agenoids or anything else come after us like that, I’ll get a blaster in their stomach cavity, then twist off their goodies.” He grinned. “Then I’ll turn ‘em over to Kris.”

“Their goodies?” Lister reached up and yanked on Rimmer’s ear. “OW!”

“Fool.”

“Idiot,” Rimmer shot back.

“Arsehole.”

“Moron.”

Lister heard the underlying warmth in his tone, and murmured, “Jackhole.”

Rimmer’s eyes flicked to Lister’s mouth. “Tease.”

“Twonk.” Lister halfheartedly tried another insult.

“You want it anyway.”

Lister ran out of words, so he shrugged in happy acquiescence and leaned sideways, pulling Rimmer’s head down.

“Is ANY room going to be safe from you two?” Cat strutted past the kiss, followed by the others. “Say, if you’re going to make public mating a habit, can you at least find me eight lady cats so I don’t have to listen to you two? You sound like those videos of sick walruses when you get going.”

Rimmer frowned down at Lister. “You really need to do something about your pussycat,” he complained. “Don’t you have a crate you can lock it in for ‘alone time?’”

Lister pulled away, but kept his hand on Rimmer’s closest shoulder, in a comradely grip. “You’d rather we were fighting?” he asked Cat.

“When did you stop?” Cat raised both eyebrows at them, then brushed some imaginary dust off his short jacket and tugged at the hem. “Are those two heads done yet?”

“Holly said they were ready,” Kochanski confirmed, raising her arms to stretch them as she dropped into a chair on the other side of the table. She was dressed differently and looked far less stressed than she had earlier that evening; her face was no longer pinched. “Hey, Holly? Fiona?”

On cue, Holly’s disembodied head popped up on the large screen that dominated the room. “Ready to rock, dudes?” he asked, jovially. “Got some bees we need to power up.” He looked around at them. “So, what’re you going to say?”

“Say?” Rimmer asked.

“When you switch them back on; what are you planning to say to them? How do you explain being here, who you are, all that jazz?”

Everybody looked at one another, a little lost. “I figured we’d just say hi, how you doin’, say, by the way, we found your primary holodiscs were corrupt and repaired them, you told us we could use your backups, now here’s a message from yourselves. We don’t know what the smeg you’re going to say. So go watch,” Lister finally said, shrugging. “What’re we supposed to tell them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ask them about themselves? Expand on whatever you read in the database?” Everybody glanced at one another. “You did consult the database about them, right? How do you know he was telling the truth about who they were?” They all looked to Rimmer.

“Their names and photos were all I could find,” he defended. “There was a short bio on each one – they seem to bear out the story Lyle told.”

“What are their last names?” Kochanski piped up. “We were so busy asking everything else, we didn’t get that in our interview.”

“Metz,” Rimmer supplied.

“And hers?”

He frowned. “The same as his …” He trailed off at Kochanski’s prodding expression. “She went by his last name. Her unmarried name was Matthews. E. Althea Matthews. According to the database, Kris, everything he told us checks out. Now, he could have manipulated the database, or she could’ve, I suppose.” He lifted an annoyed eyebrow. “It’s not like they come with smegging references, is it? Trail’s a bit cold for that.”

Now they all swung their attention to Holly. “Hang on,” the hologram sighed, disappearing briefly. When he reappeared thirty seconds later, he reported, “Arnold’s right. I don’t see any corruption points in original data. Course, that doesn’t mean it’s not there. This KEN was a higher-processing consciousness than I am, and he could’ve-”

“Can we get on with this?” Cat demanded. “I’m due for a nap in fifteen minutes, and I still need to try to have sex with the new lady between now and then.”

“Leave her be,” Lister warned him mildly. “She’ll have enough to deal with without fighting off a horny feline first thing.” He gave Rimmer a sidelong look. “May as well get this over with.”

“The discs are running; we just need to switch on the hardware.” Rimmer reached for one of the bees, then pulled back. “We should do them at the same time so one doesn’t have to watch the other just ‘appear’ out of nowhere.”

Taking the hint, Lister picked up the smaller, sleeker bee that was Althea’s; it was closest. He turned it over twice, finding the switch, and looked up to see Rimmer giving him a nod, mouthing “One … two … three.”

A half-second after they tossed the bees into the air toward a somewhat open space near the end of the table, Lyle and Althea materialized, standing. At first, they looked surprised; then, confused and annoyed. “How’d we get here?” Althea asked nobody in particular. “This isn’t the imaging chamber.” She noticed her husband, and some of the annoyance melted away. “When did you come in? I thought they already did your disc update.”

Lyle looked as clueless as she did. “Baby, I don’t think we’re in the hologram suite; this looks like your wardroom.” He looked briefly sheepish. “I mean, Captain. Apologies.” She gave him a quick, fond smile that left no doubt that at least the personal part of Lyle’s story was accurate. “But why are we-” He finally seemed to notice other people in the room; suspicion filled his eyes. “This isn’t part of the crew.”

By then, she’d noticed too. Her reaction was to raise her chin and pull herself even taller, if possible, as she scrutinized each of them in turn. “Who are you? What are you doing here? How did you get-” She cut herself off as her eyes landed on Rimmer. She squinted and leaned a little forward toward him, staring for a good twenty seconds. “Uncle Arnie? What’re you doing here?”

Rimmer’s eyes went wide. “You know- That’s not- Uncle who?”

“Wait, I thought you were killed on that ship.” She frowned, tilting her head to study him. “Aren’t you Arnold Rimmer?” He said nothing, in shock. “John? Your brother?”

Lister watched part of Rimmer’s color make a creeping return to his face, his mouth hanging open as he visibly processed the question – then nodded. “John,” he repeated in a murmur. “John married … Tabitha.” He seemed to be thinking to himself. “Tabitha. Tabitha Matthews.” The confusion cleared in his expression and he raised his voice to address the woman. “Emily??”

She made a face. “God, I hate that name.”

“There’s no Rimmer listed in the ship’s database, even as a maiden name.”

The blonde’s expression hardened subtly. “Dad and I- That’s a long, long story.” She shook her head. “And then Uncle Frank and Uncle Howard, and their goited-” She shook her head again. “I don’t want them or their lousy name.”

“How old are you?” Rimmer hadn’t felt this tremendously un-Ace-like since before he’d taken over the bacofoil suit. Encountering some other Arnold’s smeg was one thing; it had never left him lightheaded. At least not to this degree.

“Thirty.” She cocked her head. “You … were reported dead, the week before my fifteenth birthday.” She shifted subtly to command stance, crossing her arms. “What are you doing here? You weren’t on that mining ship? Are you really Arnold Rimmer? Where are my crew …”

It would be another few minutes before Rimmer heard the rest; the buzzing in his head stepped up as the shock settled into his soft tissue and picked out furniture and drapes, and her voice abruptly trailed off. That he didn’t end up slumped on the carpet owed entirely to Lister noticing just in time and shoving a wheeled chair behind his knees so he could faint into it.

Althea looked down thoughtfully, inclining her head to the side. “Yes – it’s him.”


End file.
